Follower role orientations affect how followers approach the leadership process; however, there has been little insight into how individuals use these role beliefs to influence leader outcomes, particularly through their psychological and social leader-follower relationships. This research examines how co-production, passive, and anti-authoritarian follower role orientations affect a follower's influence on their leader and leader effectiveness indirectly through psychological closeness and relationship quality. The results from two studies suggest co-production role orientation had positive effects on influence on the leader through psychological closeness and on perceived leader effectiveness through closeness and leader-member exchange. Passive role orientation was negatively related to followers' influence on the leader through reduced psychological closeness in study 1, while anti-authoritarian role beliefs were negatively related to closeness in study 2. These findings suggest that when followers believe co-production is critical to the leadership process, closeness with the leader, relationship quality, and perceived leader effectiveness improve.

In this study, we use implicit leadership theory to investigate how leader integrity, one of the most important traditional Chinese virtues, influences subordinates’ organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) in the Chinese context. The results of our survey reveal that leader integrity is associated with subordinates’ OCB, and that this relationship is fully mediated by leader effectiveness. In addition, traditionality moderated the relationship between leader integrity and leader effectiveness; the relationship was significant among less traditional subordinates, but insignificant among more traditional subordinates. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications for leaders in China.