Solomon Awan
Articles Summary and Synthesis
10/6/2008
Howell, J. M., & Shamir, B. (2005). The Role of Followers in the Charismatic Leadership Process: Relationships and their Consequences. Academy of Management Review, 30(1), 96-112.
Leaders are viewed today in a variety of ways, depending on how closely followers associatethemselves with a leader. Some are called dictators, some are autocrats, and some are charismatic, etc. The way this characteristic evolves depends on the followers. Howell & Shamir, address the role followers play in a process of grooming or empowering a leader to fall into one of the above mentioned categories, particularly, the charismatic leader. Two kinds of charismatic leader relationships with followers are identified by the article depending on followers’ self-concepts. They include personalized and socialized relationships. Personalized relationship evolves from followers who have low self-esteem. This relationship, according to the article, progresses into idolizing the leader because followers have no guts to object to any wrong-doing by the leader. On the other hand, socialized charismatic relationship evolves from followers who have high self-esteem. A Socialized charismatic relationship is a healthy relationship because followers can question a charismatic leader.
How the Research Links to what we have Studied in Class
We learned in class that being a good leader depends a loton how other people judge the leader. Judging a leader to be a good or a bad leader depends on the leader’s record. Track records help a leader to establish “credibility”. Leaders who have established credibility accelerate to a higher level are trusted with more powers as followers continue to judge the leader positively. That is how charisma develops; it starts with family members at homeand then move to the organizational level. A CEO who combines “hedgehog” strategy with trust lifts an organization from good to great. As such, some followers would see this leader as their hope for the organization’s success and would develop either personalized or socialized relationships.
The Important Point to My Development as a Leader
The important thing to my development as a leader is to avoid personalized relationships. This kind of relationship is bad because it, step-by-step, leads to dictatorship and abuse of power. Instead, I should be working on fostering socialized relationships because it represents values of democracy. The way I will foster socialized relationships is by listening and accommodating other viewpoints that are different from mine.
Agle, B. R., Nagarajan, N. J., Sonnenfeld, J. A., & Srinivasan, D. (2006). Does Ceo Charisma Matter? an Empirical Analysis of the Relationships among Organizational Performance, Environmental Uncertainty, and Top Management Team Perceptions of Ceo Charisma. Academy of Management Journal, 49(1), 161-174.
The intent of this article is to find out whether charismatic CEOs are associated with better organizational performance compared to their less charismatic counterparts. The reason why the article puts more significance on leadership charisma is because CEOs are drivers of organizational performance. The article reported that empirical evidence on the relationship between CEO charisma and organizational performance is mixed. The article, in other researches, reported that charismatic leaders can be more effectivethan less charismatic leaders. In another finding, charismatic leadership may have downsides for organizational performance because of the frequent association between charisma and dysfunctional narcissism. The finding of this article suggested that “the perceived measures of organizational performance are associated with subsequent perceptions of CEO charisma”.
How Research Contribution Links to the Class Studies
The role of a leader is to stir a team toward accomplishing an organizational mission. The leader accomplishes this by positively influencing the behaviors of its employees. This is what class studies called rallying a team in a goal directed manner. Any leader who does not influence employees toward accomplishing a goal is not inspiring and this can be reflected in the poor organizational outcomes, which is low productivity, dissatisfaction, and less development.
The Important Point to My Development as a Leader
As a developing leader, the important thing for me to do would be torally employees toward higher organization’sperformance. While acknowledging that directing is part of a leader’s job, I still do not believe in leaders who direct remotely and do not work together with their team in a field. For example, when running a store, a manager should not call ona customer services representative to take care of a customer when he/she needs immediate help. My leadership style would employ less of such subordination, and wouldpromote teamwork instead.
Erez, A., Johnson, D. E., Misangyi, V. F., LePine, M. A., & Halverson, K. C. (2008).Stirring the Hearts of Followers: Charismatic Leadership as the Transferal of Affect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(3), 602-616.
This article gives emphasis toa charismatic leader’s relationship with followers; basically, the kind of influence charisma has on the followers. To establish influential behaviors of the followers, the article hypothesized three qualities that were tested later. These include a leader’s charisma as being positively associated with followers’ positive affects and negatively related to followers’ negative affects. Second, that leader charisma is associated positively with leader’s positive affects. And last, that leader charisma is associated positively with displays of positive leader expressions. The results of all the three tests supported the hypotheses of the existing correlation between followers and leaders’ behaviors. This means that qualities of a charismatic leader influence followers in the same way the leader behaves.
How the Research Links to what have Studies in Class
This article has a link to what we have studied in this class based on followers’ personalities and values. A charismatic leader touches followers’ emotion,resulting to influencing followers’ values. This means that followers follow leaders because a leader displays values that arouse them. For example, a manager working for a certain firm may have values and a personality that is liked by some and not by others. This manager may find it difficult to work with those who do not share his work values, while at the same time find it easier to work with those who share his work values.
The Important Point to My Development as a Leader
Important thing to my development as a leader istopromote cultures and values that influence behaviors of staff and others in a positive way. They should be cultures and values that are found in the organization’s mission, vision, values, and goals that I work for. Influencing behaviors of others according to the organization’s values would make me feel I have performed my duty to the stakeholders.
Fanelli, A., Misangyi, V. F. (2006). Bringing Out Charisma: Ceo Charisma and External Stakeholders. Academy of Management Review, 31(4), 1049-1061
The article addressed the positive role charismatic CEOs play in influencingexternal stakeholders. Because CEOs are the most noticeablepeople in the organization, according to the article, CEO’s charismatic behaviors, strong values, vision for the futureand unconventional and risk-taking behaviors serve to increase identification among external stakeholders. To position an organization strongly with external stakeholders,CEOs, can in part, project their charismatic image through communication stylein media such as advertisements and interviews. The importance of CEO charisma, in relation to external stakeholders, is to help an organization achieve its goal. The charismatic leader influences external stakeholders to indentify with the organization, thus, helping organization’s image in a broader array.
How the Research Links to what have Studies in Class
The research links to the class studies throughleaders’promotion of their organization’s “vision” to create value for their stakeholders. A charismatic CEO helpsthe organization’s image in the way that external stakeholdersbelieve that the leader has power to create value for the company. As a result of his charismatic character, investors would not hesitate to invest or give loans to such a company because the CEO has demonstrated that he has clear vision and capabilityofcreating value for the company. As and example of charismatic leadership, Dr. Garang envisioned New Sudan beyond tribal, religious, racial lines; a Sudan where all Sudanese are equal before the law. The vision of New Sudan was unpopular to the Sudanese elite, while ordinary Sudanese citizenry are buying into this idea now. The same is true with Dr. Martin Luther King; his dream for America is now a reality as the black man has an equal chance of becoming our next president in about a month time. This is an example of what was said in the first article. Leaders need to build on the vision until the outcomes, according to the leadership model of productivity, satisfaction, and developments are realized, promoting an organization’s performance.
The Important Point to My Development as a Leader
As a leader, I would use my charisma as a means of selling a vision that is good for all. The reason is that charisma is abused by some leaders to mobilize followers on the course that is harmful to a community. For example, Hitlerusedhis charisma to influence the behavior of many Germans to push their superiority which led to the destruction of many lives including the lives of Germany people. Therefore, following a person because he has charisma is not enough. It is important to follow a person because he uses his charisma to rally for the support of common good. For the sake of business leaders, they should know that their decisions affect lives of many and they should use their charisma in a way that is fair to all their stakeholders.
Pastor, J., Meindl, J. R., & Mayo, M. C. (2002).A Network Effects Model of Charisma Attributions. Academy of Management Journal, 45(2), 410-420.
There is wide range of views on how a charismatic leader evolves. With these views in consideration, this article has approached the understanding of charismatic leader evolutionthrough the lens of social system on what is called the network effect. The notion of the network effect suggested that social groups (leader’s followers) have similar views on the charismatic leader they follow. According to Pastor & Mayo, the extent to which a leader is judged by individual followers to possess charismatic features will, to some degree, reflect socialized attributions. By the same token, an important element of the charismatic leadership process involves the perceptions and evaluation made by followers about the characteristics of leaders and their effects.Pastor & Mayo used two hypotheses to test the network effect model. They include proximity and convergence effects.Outgoing police directorsand students were used as samples. The results indicated that “proximity in the friendship network has a statistically significant beta coefficient predicting similarity of attributions of charismatic leadership”. Also, the result of convergence effects supported the hypothesis that followers have convergence perspective on how they view a charismatic leader.
How Research Contribution Links to the Class Studies
In this class, we often discussthe role of a leader, which is to influence behaviors of others in a goal directed manner. The definition of a leader is what links this article to the class studies. The main theme of the article is network effects. This means that a leader may not hold a group of individuals together unless he/she has influence on their behaviors to carryout a mission with loyalty. Based on their connection to a leader, this loyalty makes group members have the same traits on how theyanalysis a leader to be charismatic or not.
The Important Point to My Development as a Leader
What is important to my developmentas a leader is credibility. Doing what I said I was going to do would be one of my leadership principles. This would help me connects with the people I lead because charisma is attributed to how a leader connects with the followers, and followers accept charismatic leader based on the past performances.Maintaining the same level of trust with followers is what is more important than leading people with lies. A leader should lead asa role model because he/she issetting an example for others to follow. And it starts with leading yourself!