Both traditional and current models of leadership generally neglect followers' idiosyncratic motivations for supporting their leaders and instead focus on qualities of the leader and his/her behavior to explain why leaders are supported. Largely lacking is recognition that follower support for a leader includes a self-centered dimension. In a set of three interrelated studies, this dissertation tests the theory that a follower's perception that a leader is an aid or hindrance to his/her self-interested pursuits determines the support followers give or withhold for their organizational leaders.

Using surveys and follow-up interviews, Study 1 investigates the support followers allege they extended to leaders who they perceived as assets in their self-interested pursuits, as well as the actions they took for leaders they perceived as having a negative net impact on those pursuits. These findings were then converted into five categories of behavior, which were used to operationalize follower support and construct a support behavior scale.

Study 2 presents three idealized leadership profiles to a population comparable to the one in Study 1 in order to investigate the association between followers' expectations of the self-interests served by each leadership profile and their subsequent inclinations to provide support. Followers who perceived their leader as able to aid in their self-interested pursuits indicated a higher level of support than those followers who did not. The findings are interpreted as evidence that follower self-interest plays a critical role in determining the support a leader is likely to receive. Additionally, followers' descriptions of what drove their leadership preferences were used to develop a conceptual categorization of self-interests that followers value in their relationships with leaders.

Study 3 compares the effects of two different drivers of the support followers are inclined to give to their leaders. Whether the follower perceives the leader as meeting their self-interests and whether the leader is perceived as beneficial or detrimental to the organization are experimentally manipulated. Results suggest that follower self-interest is a more powerful driver of the support followers give to their leaders than their perception that the leader is a net positive for the organization.