Paola Gatti

Generativity and balance in leadership

The ability to transform followers into new leaders is an important task for leadership, as it guarantees organizational continuity and generativity. At the same time, however, it is a challenge that too often goes unanswered. In particular, research data emphasize that intergenerational transfer is highly critical in Italy: the number of elderly entrepreneurs, executives and top managers, for example, has increased significantly in recent years. This article presents a theoretical reflection on this issue, and has four main goals: to introduce the Italian leadership situation; to describe and understand the ‘dark side of leadership’ with particular attention to narcissism in leadership; to identify the main elements which can promote ‘generative leadership’ in organizational contexts (i.e. in this paper, a leadership based on the idea of generativity developed by Erik Erikson in 1968), highlighting the ability to achieve balance in leadership as a core aspect; and to provide suggestions about leadership training and development programmes, with a special focus on mentoring and coaching.

Relationships between followers’ behaviors and job satisfaction in a sample of nurses

The study investigated two followership behaviors, followers’ active engagement and followers’ independent critical thinking, and their relationship with job satisfaction in a sample of nurses. In addition, the study also considered a number of control variables and classical job demands and job resources—workload and emotional dissonance for job demands, and meaningful work for job resources—which have an impact on well-being at work. A paper-and-pencil questionnaire was administered to 425 nurses in an Italian hospital, and a hierarchical multiple regression was used to test the hypotheses. In addition to the job demands and job resources considered, followers’ active engagement had a significant impact on job satisfaction. Moreover, it showed a significant linear and curvilinear relationship with the outcome variable. Followers’ independent critical thinking has a non significant relationship with job satisfaction, confirming the mixed results obtained in the past for this dimension. These findings bore out the importance of analyzing followers’ behaviors as potential resources that people can use on the job to increase their own well-being. Looking at followers not just as passive recipients but as active and proactive employees can also benefit the organization.

La followership nelle organizzazioni

Il tema della followership nelle organizzazioni ha iniziato solo di recente a essere oggetto di riflessione teorica e di ricerche empiriche, nonostante la sua importanza sia stata sottolineata da diversi autori nel corso degli anni. Cio si riflette nella sostanziale mancanza di un vocabolario condiviso per affrontare, studiare e approfondire la followership; nell’assenza di una definizione consensuale di followership; in un corpus di studi ancora poco consolidato; in una ricostruzione storico-teorica in fieri; in un elevato margine di sovrapposizione tra la descrizione del profilo del follower e l’analisi del processo della followership; in una imprecisa distinzione tra subordinato e follower. Il presente lavoro si propone dunque come una rassegna critica della letteratura scientifica sul tema della followership che appare cruciale in quanto, non soltanto, come osserva Collinson (2006), ogni organizzazione ha numericamente piu follower che leader, ma «persino coloro che hanno i piu alti livelli di responsabilita di leadership rispondono a qualcuno» (Tanoff e Barlow, 2002: 157), ovvero sono dei follower. Tra le dimensioni centrali della followership si ritrovano alcuni aspetti quali, da un lato, la capacita di interpretare ed eseguire correttamente le richieste del leader, dall’altro l’orientamento a stimolarlo attraverso una relazione permeata da pensiero critico e creativita. Sono elementi essenziali l’autonomia, in questa direzione, e l’esercizio di influenza “verso l’alto”, nella costruzione e nel mantenimento della relazione followerleader. Piu puntualmente, in modo trasversale a diversi contributi, e possibile individuare, a proposito di relazione follower-leader, alcuni elementi definitori: una asimmetria (di potere e capacita di influenza) sottesa al rapporto tra i ruoli; la condivisione tra leader e follower di un obiettivo comune; la possibilita per il follower di esercitare, a certe condizioni, un’influenza sul leader. Ulteriori studi, soprattutto qualitativi, saranno necessari per precisare questi aspetti. A uno stadio iniziale appare anche il tentativo di esplorare le dinamiche di followership e, in specifico, di individuare gli antecedenti di una followership efficace cosi come tutti i suoi possibili esiti. Per quanto riguarda gli antecedenti, e stato indaga to soprattutto il ruolo delle dimensioni di personalita, mentre per quanto riguarda gli studi sugli esiti della followership efficace sono stati messi in luce i legami con la soddisfazione lavorativa e con il commitment organizzativo. Tra le principali implicazioni dello studio della followership vi e quella di rendere la conoscenza della leadership piu completa ed equilibrata. In questo senso, l’identificazione del profilo atteso di leadership e di followership potrebbe consentire lo sviluppo di interventi formativi mirati a facilitare un’assunzione dinamica dei ruoli di leader e di follower. Cio sarebbe di particolare importanza per il middle management.

A Study of Willingness to Mentor

Mentoring has been defined as “a relationship between a young adult and an older, more experienced adult that helps the younger individual learn to navigate in the adult world and in the world of work” (Kram, 1985, 2). Mentoring is a developmental relationship that can be beneficial to the mentor and the organization as a whole, as well as to the protege (Eby, Durley, Evans & Ragins, 2006). The benefits are chiefly subjective (Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz & Lima, 2004), and affect attitudes, interpersonal relations, and motivation/involvement and, to a lesser extent, health-related outcomes (Eby, Allen, Evans, Ng, & Dubois, 2008). Mentoring thus seems capable of promoting organizational well-being, a goal that can be more effectively reached if mentoring is informal (Chao, Walz & Gardner, 1992).

I vantaggi del mentoring in organizzazione: alcune differenze tra mentee e non-mentee

Advantages of mentoring in organization: some differences between mentees and non-mentees - Organizational literature has described the advantages of mentoring for mentors and, above all, for mentees. A survey of 200 respondents employed in three organizations in northwestern Italy shows that mentees have higher mean scores for job satisfaction, self-efficacy on the job and positive emotions at work than non-mentees. Mentees also show lower mean scores for negative emotions at work than non-mentees. This last result, however, is not confirmed by the regression analysis. Mentees reporting different degrees of satisfaction with the mentoring experience show significant differences in selfefficacy on the job and in variables that investigate mentoring perceptions. Keywords: mentoring, mentoring advantages, developmental relationships. Parole chiave: mentoring, vantaggi del mentoring, relazioni di sviluppo.