What does it mean to follow? An exploration of a followership profile in hospitality and tourism

ABSTRACT

Although leadership has received considerable attention from many scholars, much less research has focused on those who follow leaders; yet, followers contribute much to the success of an organization. This study explored the followership profiles of stakeholders in hospitality and tourism education. The findings summarize the followership dimensions of a sample of hospitality students, educators, and industry professionals. For each of the five followership dimensions the mean scores for industry professionals were rated higher when compared with students and educators, with courage to participate in transformation being the highest rated among all three groups. Implications for hospitality education are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Followership
• hospitality
• education
• industry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.