Transcription of cstl-hcb.semo.edu
1 CharismaticandTransformationalLeadership AReviewandanAgendaforFutureResearchTimot hy A. Judge, Erin Fluegge Woolf, Charlice Hurst, and Beth all the leadership theories in organizational research, charismatic/transformational leadership has captured scholars in-terest most over the past decade. This article reviews what has been learned about the antecedents of charismatic and transformationalleadership, their effects on individual and collective outcomes across cultures, and moderators of those effects. We conclude with a setof recommendations for moving this field of study forward, including a call for more rigorous research designs that provide greaterinsight into the process of transformational leadership ( , causal direction and mediating mechanisms), further conceptual clarifica-tions, and further integration with other schools of leadership words: leadership, transformational leadership, charismatic leadershipCharismatische und transformationale F hrung: Ein berblick und eine Agenda f r zuk nftige allen F hrungstheorien hat die charismatische/transformationale F hrung w hrend der letzten zehn Jahre dasgr te Interesse in der Organisationsforschung hervorgerufen.
2 Dieser Artikel gibt einen berblick ber die Erkenntnisse in Bezug aufdie Bedingungen von charismatischer und transformationaler F hrung sowie die individuellen und kollektiven Wirkungen, wie sie sichkultur bergreifend zeigen, sowie die Moderatoren dieser Effekte. Abschlie end werden eine Reihe von Empfehlungen f r die zuk nf-tige Forschung formuliert. Diese beinhalten die Forderung nach sorgf ltigeren Forschungsdesigns, die einen besseren Einblick in denProzess der transformationalen F hrung erlauben (z. B. Kausalzusammenh nge und Mediationsmechanismen), die Forderung nachzus tzlichen konzeptuellen Kl rungen sowie die Forderung nach einer weitergehenden Integration mit anderen Schulen der F sselw rter: F hrung, transformationale F hrung, charismatische F hrungLeadership is, of course, one of those topics in which in-terest never wanes. Leaders are, by definition, at the pin-nacle of any society s largest organizations, and their ac-tions have the potential to change the course of the stakes are high and the importance of theirdecisions fundamental, effective leadership is still verymuch in the eye of the beholder.
3 For instance, in a recentthree-day period, one prominent Princeton historian pro-claimed George W. Bush the worst U. S. President in his-tory (Wilentz, 2006, April 21), whereas a former deputyprime minister of Israel and survivor of the Soviet Gulagargued that Bush is a modern dissident whose doctrine islikely to forever change the international political land-scape (Sharansky, 2006, April 24). It seems, to para-phrase Shakespeare, thatthere is no good or bad leaderbut thinking makes it more challenging is that we often succumb tothe tautology of judging effective leadership by the re-sults. If one admits that many outcomes are beyond aleader s control, then one must wonder how historymight have judged a leader quite differently if fate hadtwisted a different way. It seems that the perception ofleadership is not merely immersed in our own values,but in the perceived outcomes under a leader s watch, ir-respective of the leader behaviors that may or may nothave produced the , the leadership scholar s task is a difficult study an important concept.
4 In theory, most of uswould agree that Carlyle, Nietzsche, Weber, and otherswere telling the truth when they wrote of the importanceof heroes and great leaders to societies. However, in ap-plying that concept, problems overwhelm us. Who arethe great leaders? What makes them so? Are great lead-ers always good? Are great leaders always effective? Ef-fective in whose eyes, and over what time frame? In pos-ing questions like these, it seems leadership is as much anaesthetic phenomenon as a scientific that enigmatic preamble in mind, which musthang over all of which we are soon to speak, we do thinkthere have been and are (conditional) truths to be gleanedfrom the study of leadership. In this review, we focus ourZeitschrift f r Arbeits- u. Organisationspsychologie (2006) 50 (N. F. 24) 4, 203 214 Hogrefe Verlag, G ttingen 2006 DOI: on a concept of leadership charismatic ortransformational leadership which has been the domi-nant focus of contemporary leadership research.
5 Accord-ingly, in this article we review the charismatic/transfor-mational leadership literatures. In so doing, we discussmeasurement, validity, moderating factors, and finallyreturn to some of the issues above in offering an agendafor future of Charismaticand TransformationalLeadership ResearchCharismatic LeadershipThe first scholar to discuss charismatic leadership wasMax Weber. In particular, he discussed three types of au-thority as forms of control that people will accept: tradi-tional, legal/rational, and charismatic. Weber (1947,pp. 358 359) definedcharismaas being set apart fromordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatur-al, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptionalpowers or qualities regarded as of divine origin or asexemplary, and on the basis of them the individual con-cerned is treated as a leader. Despite the important influ-ence of Weber s work on researchers thinking about or-ganizations, his work on charisma lay dormant until themid 1970 House (1977) further developed Weber s con-cept in articulating a theory of charismatic leadershipthat, at its core, argued that followers use an attributionalprocess regarding their leaders.
6 Based on certain behav-iors displayed by leaders, followers attribute extraordi-nary or heroic leadership abilities to those leaders. Basedon House s theory, researchers then began to uncover andidentify key characteristics of charismatic leadership. Awidely accepted framework is that of Conger and Kanun-go (1998), who explain that charismatic leadership istypified by four key characteristics: possessing and artic-ulating a vision, willing to take risks to achieve the vi-sion, exhibiting sensitivity to follower needs, and demon-strating novel interesting conceptual issues are worthy of dis-cussion here. First, much of the work on charismaticleadership has eschewed the Weberian perspective thatcharismatic leaders are rare or extraordinary. Conger(1989, p. 161), for example, opined that charisma is notsome magical ability limited to a handful. As Trice andBeyer (1986) and Beyer (1999) noted, charismatic lead-ership has beentamedin that it is assumed that charismais a property possessed by all individuals, to a greater orlesser degree.
7 On the one hand, if we are to empiricallystudy charismatic leadership, we cannot do so based onthe assumption that it is a quality held by a handful of in-dividuals (there are not enough such leaders to study). Onthe other hand, if charisma is seen as relatively prosaic,have we damaged the concept? Clearly, the charismaticqualities of political leaders from Lincoln to Hitler, reli-gious leaders from Martin Luther to Pope John Paul II,and business leaders from Est e Lauder to Jack Welch,do not seem to be a general , some researchers would distinguish charismaas a trait or personal quality from the charismatic leader-ship process. House, for example, argues in favor of thelatter (House, 1977). Locke and colleagues, conversely,clearly distinguish a charismatic communication stylefrom other leadership qualities ( , see Kirkpatrick &Locke, 1996). This is a topic to which we return , though Conger (1990) has often described thedark side of charismatic leadership, judging from the re-search literature, he seems like a lone voice.
8 As the afore-mentioned examples of charismatic leaders suggest,however, charismatic leadership seemingly can be usedfor either good or bad ends, depending on one s perspec-tive and the hindsight of history. It seems obvious thatcharismatic leadership is neither inherently good norevil, but the implicit assumption in the literature has beenthat it is a positive force in LeadershipThe Full Range Leadership model, developed by Bassand Avolio (see Avolio & Bass, 1991) is comprised ofboth transactional and transformational leadership (seeFigure 1). Elements of both types of leadership are ar-ranged on a vertical axis measuring effectiveness (inef-fective to effective) and a horizontal axis measuring in-volvement (passive to active). Transactional leadershipstyles tend to fall in the ineffective and passive quadrant,while transformational leadership styles largely fall inthe effective and active quadrant of the model.
9 Althoughthis seems to indicate that transformational leadership issuperior to transactional leadership, transformationalleadership researchers argue that the two may actuallycomplement each other. To further clarify between thetwo, we now examine the four dimensions of each typeof four dimensions of transactional leadership aregenerally referred to as contingent reward, managementby exception (active), management by exception (pas-sive), and laissez-faire. In the case of contingent reward,leaders provide resources in exchange for follower sup-port (Bass, 1990). Management by exception has twofacets, active and passive. In the active sense, leadersmonitor followers performance and take corrective ac-tion when necessary. In the case of passive managementTimothy A. Judge, Erin Fluegge Woolf, Charlice Hurst, and Beth Livingston204by exception, leaders do little monitoring and only inter-vene when the problem becomes serious.
10 In the laissez-faire type of transactional leadership, leaders simply avoidleadership responsibilities. These transactional leadershipbehaviors become decreasingly effective as leader partic-ipation declines. Thus, contingent reward is thought to bethe most effective form of transactional leadership where-as laissez-faire is considered the most ineffective, the lat-ter so much so that some argue it is not even transactionalleadership (see Judge & Piccolo, 2004).Transformational leadership supplements the charac-teristics of transactional leadership, and followers are in-spirationally influenced. Bernard Bass, who laid thegroundwork in transformational leadership research, ex-plains that transformational leadership is accomplishedthrough the four I s: idealized influence, inspirationalmotivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualizedconsideration (Bass, 1985). Idealized influence is dem-onstrated when the transformational leader serves as acharismatic role model to followers.