Followership: An Important Social Resource for Organizational Resilience

Abstract

This chapter concerns the importance of social resources in general and constructive followership in particular as prerequisites for organizational resilience. Based on a longitudinal case study of a subcontractor in the automotive industry, the chapter describes how organizational resilience can be created based on the engagement by workers resulting from distributed leadership and the development of followership. The spirit of the company supported community and constructive relationships within the organizations and toward other actors. The key contribution is that social resources are important for creating organizational resilience, which is of particular importance in industries with an emphasis on "hard" competitive advantages as products and technology.