Good Employees Assume Responsibility

Moller (1994) lists responsibility as the central element of employeeship without which a person cannot display loyalty and take initiative.

The employer employee relationship at its core, is a transaction. Burns (1979) describes this kind of leadership as transactional leadership. Transactional leadership is where an employee completes assigned tasks in exchange for rewards in the form of a paycheck, bonuses, and benefits. For years, transactional leadership was the norm--"If you do this, I will give you that." Transactional leadership is no longer thought of as the best way to run an organization (although many believe that it is a pipe dream to totally eliminate the transactional aspect of management). Leadership trends today advocates the benefits of self-leadership, shared leadership, and peer leadership. The focus is moving from the leader to the follower.

3 Aspects of Employeehip

Employeeship occurs at the intersection of the employees' responsibility, initiative, and loyalty.

When an employee makes a wholehearted and goal oriented effort within the three success areas (productivity, relations, quality) of the organization, a special kind of personal commitment is demonstrated – this commitment can be called “employeeship” (Moller, 1994). When all employees are deeply committed to the survival and development of the organization and thus demonstrate employeeship, the organization can be said to have an “employeeship culture”.