Abstract
This chapter raises the question “why do people voluntarily support another?” and proposes three points to evaluate leader quality (i.e., why there are so many bad ones): Followers’ support for and perspective about the leader (followers perceive their leaders positively and non-followers can perceive the same person negatively); followers’ response to bosses who abuse formal authority with non-followers (followers often support these bosses despite their negative impact); and the assessment and decision process followers use when they support leaders (it is often subjective and cognitively biased and irrational). A typology of “the good, the bad, and the ugly leaders” summarizes how to explain followers’ choices of leaders.
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Blank, W. (2021). What Explains the Quality of Today’s Leaders?. In: Örtenblad, A. (eds) Debating Bad Leadership. Palgrave Debates in Business and Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65025-4_9
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