Beyond the Boss: Rethinking Leadership Through Followership in Transnational Organized Crime

Sammanfattning

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how former members of transnational organized crime organizations experience followership in relation to their leaders, challenging assumptions present in criminological research by integrating organizational constructionist perspectives. Methodology: Guided by abductive reasoning, we studied the narratives of former members of organized crime groups, their roles, and their relationships with leaders in transnational organized crime. We are drawing on social constructionism and a broader interpretivist tradition. Our data was collected from 13 video-podcast interviews. Theoretical Framing: Our literature review presents existing research on the topics of organized crime, transnational organized crime, leadership and followership. Contributions: Our study makes three theoretical contributions: conceptualizing pre-entry followership as an analytical category, challenging leader centric assumptions by showing followership can be directed toward collective rather than individual actors and demonstrating that follower-leader relationships are dynamic rather than static.