Leadership by Customers? New Roles of Service Companies' Customers**

Zusammenfassung

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This paper brings together two worlds that are usually strictly separated in research: leadership and customers. Until now leadership research has concentrated particularly on internal organizational processes, whereas customers were analyzed preferably in the context of marketing and service management. Research shows that the range of roles and functions of customers as key company stakeholders has changed dramatically in the last few years. Especially in service companies, customers (and communities), thought of as prosumers (producers and consumers), are active players, which can exert significant influence particularly on customer contact employees and on employee leadership. As only few of the established leadership concepts are open to an inclusion of customers, we choose Kerr/Jermier's (1978) substitute for leadership theory to show how the relationship between boundary spanning employees and customers can be linked to the relationship between an employee (as a follower) and his supervisor (as a leader). The analysis of this interrelatedness shows that customers can actually assume some leadership functions which subsequently will not only affect the behavior of the employees but also that of leaders. If leadership research wants to take up this challenge, it has to rethink its concepts to include new context factors relevant to the organisation. Corresponding implications and future directions for leadership research and practice are outlined.

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Auszug

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Leadership by Customers? New Roles of Service Companies' Customers**

To date, customers have played virtually no role in leadership research. Why should these two aspects now be considered jointly?

Whereas traditional management theory has preferred an industry-oriented perspective, recent years have revealed a greater interest in studies of service management. The defining characteristics of services in contrast to physical products have an immediate impact on the constitution of relationships between customers and companies. With regard to personal services, the direct interaction between employees at the interface to the market and their customers emerges as a central element of success. If, in the past, these relationships were classically sales-driven, they arc becoming more and more customer-driven due to fundamental changes in customer behavior. The new conditions of the altered framework have changed customers' attitudes and behavior patterns resulting in a new distribution of roles between the company and its customers. This has a major impact on the core relationship between customers, employees and the company in the so-called service triangle. But, what arc the effects on leadership?

Although scientific research on leadership did not begin until the twentieth century (Yukl 1998, 1), a wide variety of approaches and theories on different aspects of leadership have been developed. The emphasis of early leadership research was on individual traits and skills that leaders bring to all leadership tasks (Stogdill 1948; Delhees 1995). The next major thrust was to examine the behavior of leaders and situational variables leaders must deal with (Fiedler 1967; Blake/Mouton 1964; Hersey/Dlanchard 1969, 1972). i'ollowcd by the era of transformational leadership research, the emphasis shifted to leaders who create change in deep structures, major processes, or overall culture (Bass 1985, 1996; Tichy/Devanna 1986; House 1977; Conger/Kanungo 1998; Meindl 1990). A leader's qualities...

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