Follower-Centered Perspectives on Leadership: A Tribute to the Memory of James R. Meindl

by Raj Pillai (Editor)

The majority of leadership theories and studies have tended to emphasize the personal background, personality traits, perceptions, and actions of leaders. From this perspective, the followers have been viewed as recipients or moderators of the leader's influence, and as vehicles for the actualization of the leader's vision, mission or goals. One of the major challengers of this dominant view was the late James R. Meindl. As an alternative to the leader-centric perspective on leadership, Meindl offered a follower-centric approach that views both leadership and its consequences as largely constructed by followers and hence influenced by followers' cognitive processes and inter-follower social influence processes. As a tribute to Jim Meindl and his contributions to the field of leadership studies, Information Age Publishing is releasing a book on follower-centered approaches to leadership. The book covers a wide variety of perspectives that acknowledge the active roles of followers in the leadership process. These include the psychoanalytical perspective, leadership categorization theory, social identity theory, the shared leadership approach, attribution of charisma through social networks, the role of the media in constructing images of the leader, the social construction of followership, vision implementation by followers and a post modern approach to followership. It is hoped that the volume will provoke readers to reflect upon and extend Jim Meindl's seminal work on followership. ars and practitioners curious about the nature of research on leadership, both those with much research exposure and those new to the field.

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Raj loves God and loves people. He is a husband, father, pastor, and speaker and an award-winning author of numerous books and articles. He believes God has freely given every human being a unique set of inherent gifts and potential. Raj is an artist who uses words, ideas, stories, and thoughts as his tools to create and build something to act as a catalyst to ignite and awaken the God-given potential in every person.

Raj is also an avid mystery reader and writer. Having lived in India and the United States, his very first mystery novel brings these two wonderful countries together in The Lone Rock Mystery. Chinni Roy of the Calcutta Police joins Professor Rich Harrison in solving a gripping puzzle of murder and suspense in upstate New York.

Reviews

[J Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a collection of papers by the late James Meindl. I encourage anyone who reads this book to take the time to get a good understanding of the his approach to leadership to better understand the content presented in this book. I read this book with the intention to find a book on dynamic following and anticipate that this has lead me in the right direction.