Followership Responses to Destructive Leadership in the Tech Industry - Karen Perham-Lippman

Dr. Karen Perham-Lippman shares her research on destructive leadership patterns in the tech industry, and the response of various types of positional followers in those companies. Her findings include the behaviors of Challenger followers and their communities of coping that give rise to positive acts of self-restoration and collective resistance.

• “Challengers were revealed not just as individual followers who wanted to resist destructive leadership as part of their personal integrity or their moral belief about a thing but as a social process.”  
• “If you can find a group of folks who can help you sort out the true from the false and help you acknowledge that what you’re experiencing is real, then that community of coping is not just about coping, but about giving you the agency to do something about it.
• “You see over and over and over that performance outcomes and efficiency goals are being prioritized over employee well-being.” 
• “Destructive leadership is a genetic mutation that’s a disease in an organization. It’s toxic. It spreads like a virus. You can’t let it do that.”

About Karen

Dr. Karen Perham-Lippman serves as Senior Manager of Global Inclusion and Belonging at Otis Worldwide Corporation. As a pracademic and mission-driven business strategist with nearly fifteen years of demonstrated strategic and process thinking results in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), ESG, and social impact, she has worked with nonprofits, state government, municipal clients, and businesses across diverse industries and sectors globally. She currently serves as Co-President of the League of Women Voters South Hampton Roads in Virginia and was appointed to the State League’s DEI Committee. 

Karen is a Certified Diversity Professional and holds a certificate in designing equitable courses from the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). She earned her Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Organizational Leadership and Business Management from Eastern University, where she received the College of Business and Leadership's 2025 Student Service Award presented to a graduating student who has exemplified the college and doctoral program's ideals of leadership and scholarship on and off campus through significant contributions to the field. Karen’s scholarship is published with Ethics International Press, Emerald Publishing, Forbes, Merits International Journal, and SAGE Publishing. Her forthcoming book, Bridging Generations: Transformative Intergenerational Leadership and Followership, will be available from Emerald Publishing in Spring 2026.

Episode References

ILA Global Conference in Prague

Connect with Karen

LinkedIn - for general connections

ResearchGate – for research updates or to collaborate