Follow The Trend Or Follow The Heart? Followers' Compliance Traits Affect Their Job Performance

With the deepening of the economic reform in China,the reform of domestic organizations has entered a deep-water zone and has reached a new critical point.In a world with growing competition and increasing uncertainty,the survival and development of organizations rely on the implementation and promotion of leaders and the followers.While leaders' personal traits and behaviors play an enormous role in the development of organizations,likewise,the personal traits and behaviors of followers are crucial to the organizations as well.Therefore,it is of great importance to study followers,including what followers are and what they should be.The study of followers,including their traits and behaviors,as well as the respective expectations and hypothesis,is Implicit Followership Theory(IFT).Implicit Followership Theory has become a focus in Organizational Behavior worldwide.Based on IFT theory,researchers in the Western countries have conducted a series of researches and have confirmed that followers' implicit prototype or antiprototype are positively or negatively related with leaders' liking towards followers,leader-member exchange,followers' job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior,etc.However,the content,structure and measurement of the implicit followership prototype and anti-prototype is still undergoing investigation.For example,some researchers find followers' implicit conformity trait a positive trait,while the others find it negative.Therefore,it is of crucial to determine the content and structure of followers' implicit prototype or anti-prototype.This essay first reviews and expounds the related theories and literature of implicit followership theory,leader-member exchange,power distance and job performance,then based on implicit followership theory,it analyzes the relationship between followers' implicit trait of conformity and task performance,using leader-member exchange as a mediator and power distance as a moderator.This essay refers to the existing well-developed measurement of above-mentioned variables and forms two matching questionnaires for the leaders and followers to complete.The study conducted in several companies in Shanghai,Hangzhou and Ningbo finally collected 227 feedbacks from followers and 63 feedbacks from their leaders.Through SPSS21.0 and AMOS21 data analysis software,the collected data sets are analyzed in the structural equation model and regression analysis model.Conclusions drawn from this survey include:(1)The followers' implicit trait of conformity can positively influence their task performance.(2)Leader-membership exchange plays an intermediary role between followers' implicit trait of conformity and their task performance.(3)Followers' power distances plays a positive regulating effect between followers' implicit trait of conformity and the leader-membership exchange.