but rather persuasion. Leaders and followers are the people in this relationship. If leadership is defined as a relationship, then both leaders and followers are doing leadership.
At American, however, as Thomas (2004) commented, it is leadership that until fairly recently has been seen by labor as damaging if not destroying the culture of the organization by failing to behave as role models; for example, cutting salaries and wringing economic concessions from labor while simultaneously offering top-level managers and executives significant bonuses is hardly likely to inspire or motivate those whose incomes are being impacted by strategic decisions.
In fact, as Airline Industry Information (American Airlines CEO defends payouts, 2006) recently reported, CEO Gerard Arpey has actually defended the bonus program that is polarizing labor and management at American. Some top level executives are receiving as much as $2 million in bonuses, leading union leaders to protest and to call for an explanation of why the firm has elected to reward some of its staff while continuing to penalize others. This is a particularly important issue both politically and in terms of corporate culture in that it speaks to the use of reward systems in the organization and the ways in which reward systems shape culture. Generally, theorists such as Bolman and Deal (1991) believe that transparent corporate cultures in which rewards are egalit
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