The Essential Interdependence of Leadership and Followership

Abstract

There are many reasons to attend to the unity of leadership and follow ership. Yet, by convention, these phenomena are treated apart. Both leadership and followership repre sent active roles, given the reality that organizational functions require them at every level. The usual ex pectation of the leader role as active and the follower role as passive is misconceived even in traditional hi erarchies. Barnes and Kriger2 ob served that leadership does not rest with a single individual but is plural istic and fluid, in part due to the crossing of the formal structure by informal networks.