Fraternity in the Workplace: An Alternative to Positive Leadership and Followership

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper argues that organizations could be seen not as morally free zones, but as potential spaces for workplace fraternity. We critically assess the dominant leader–follower paradigm, including recent theories of positive leadership and followership, and contend that this framework is ill‐suited to capturing the cooperative, peer‐based moral relationships that can emerge within organizations. We propose an alternative model—the We‐structure—which conceptualizes fraternity as intentional collaboration among organizational members working toward shared goals. This model reframes organizational life not as a hierarchy of influence, but as a relational space grounded in mutual assistance and reciprocity. By doing so, the paper advances a new narrative for an economic theory of the firm by providing a moral microfoundation for intra‐organizational cooperation and coordination and by reconceptualizing workers' motivations through the We‐structure model.