Investigating The Effect Of Leader- Member Exchange On Follower's Implicit Followership Theories

"Implicit Followership Theories" is a developing issue in organizational behavior which is considered as the linkage between followership and cognition issues. Exploration and the typology of follower's perspectives and views about different dimensions of their role as a follower, which are known as follower's "implicit followership theories" is the purpose of present paper. For this purpose, using purposeful sampling method, 14 employees of 14 large organizations from different industries in Mashhad were selected. To obtain the required data, semi-structured interviews were conducted until theoretical saturation was reached. Reliability of findings was also confirmed. The resulting data was analyzed using "conventional content analysis". A total of 589 codes were located in 17 items of implicit theories. Items consisted five factors of the positive features(prototypes) of followership role. Identified prototypes included "Constructive perception of work", "Job competencies", "Mighty arm of leader", "Moral virtues" and "Initiation" which present a more comprehensive perspective on followership.