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
associate themselves 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’ selfconcepts. 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 lot on 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 home and 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 effective than 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 to rally employees toward
higher organization’s performance. 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 on a 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 would promote 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 to a 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 is to promote 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 influencing external
stakeholders. Because CEOs are the most noticeable people in the organization, according to the
article, CEO’s charismatic behaviors, strong values, vision for the future and 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 style in 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 through leaders’ promotion of their organization’s
“vision” to create value for their stakeholders. A charismatic CEO helps the organization’s
image in the way that external stakeholders believe 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
capability of creating 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, Hitler used his 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 evolution
through 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 directors and 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 discuss the 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 they analysis a leader to be charismatic or not.
The Important Point to My Development as a Leader
What is important to my development as 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 as a role model because he/she is setting an example for others to follow. And it starts with
leading yourself!