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Explaining Charisma: A Constructivist View

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Charismatic Leadership in Singapore

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Abstract

In this chapter, we will offer a sociological working definition of charismatic leadership. Conceptually, this definition is situated within the dialectical dimensions of social reality that we discussed in the previous chapter, and it offers a framework for the treatment of a social phenomenon that intrinsically embeds micro, messo, and macro aspects.

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Notes

  1. 1.

     In R.M. Stodgill’s Individual Behavior and Group Achievement (1959).

  2. 2.

    Ibid., p. 212.

  3. 3.

    See his Studies in Leadership (1965), pp. 17–18.

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Shils (1965), Eisenstadt (1968), House, Woycke, and Fodor (1988), and Conger (1989).

  5. 5.

    See Berger’s Sociology Reinterpreted (Berger & Kellner, 1981) and Eisenstadt’s Power, Trust and Meaning (1995).

  6. 6.

    Of which one possible manifestation is the immense plasticity of the human organism’s response to the environmental forces at work.

  7. 7.

    Eisenstadt, op. cit., p. 331.

  8. 8.

    See his Defining the Situation: The Organization of Meaning in Social Interaction (1968), pp. 9–11.

  9. 9.

    See Eisenstadt’s Power, Trust and Meaning (1995), p. 349.

  10. 10.

    See Berger and Luckman’s The Social Construction of Reality (1966), p. 96.

  11. 11.

    Eisenstadt (1995) op. cit., p. 349.

  12. 12.

    See Foucault’s From the Order of Discourse (1989).

  13. 13.

    Ibid., p. 221.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., p. 221.

  15. 15.

    See Shils’s Charisma, Order and Status (1965) and Geertz’s Centers, Kings and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power (1977).

  16. 16.

    In Sociology Reinterpreted (1981).

  17. 17.

    Ibid., pp. 57, 60.

  18. 18.

    See his 1974 essay, “Leadership and Organizational Excitement.”

  19. 19.

    Eisenstadt (1995) op. cit.

  20. 20.

    See Schein’s Organization Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View (1985); Argyris’ Increasing Leadership Effectiveness (1976); and Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s Variations in Value Orientations (1961).

  21. 21.

    Argyris, ibid.

  22. 22.

    See Weber’s The Theory of Social and Economic Organization ([1924] 1947), p. 362.

  23. 23.

    By William Friedland in For a Sociological Concept of Charisma (1964).

  24. 24.

    Weber, op. cit., p. 1113.

  25. 25.

    For example, see Sashkin, 1988; Friedland, 1964; Tucker, 1969; Bensman & Givant, 1975; Kanter, 1984; Roberts & Bradley, 1988.

  26. 26.

    The Theory of Charismatic Leadership (1970), pp. 75–76.

  27. 27.

    In Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations (1988), p. 55.

  28. 28.

    See Limits of Charisma by Roberts, N.C. and Bradley, R.T. (1988), p. 273.

  29. 29.

    See Mosocovici’s The Invention of Society (1993), pp. 124–125.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., p. 127.

  31. 31.

    See Zaleznik’s “Managers and Leaders: Are they Different?” (1977).

  32. 32.

    See Behavioral Dimensions of Charismatic Leadership (1988), pp. 88–89, 327.

  33. 33.

    Other scholars, such as Harrison Trice and Janice Beyer (1986), as well as David Nadler and Michael Tushman (1990: 82–83), see charismatic leadership as having an important role in organizational change which involves innovation and “re-orientation.”

  34. 34.

    These two types of change (change within the given structure and change of the structure) were analytically discussed by several scholars, for example, Coser (1967), Radcliffe-Brown (1957), Watzlawick, Weakland, and Fish (1974), and Morgan (1986).

  35. 35.

    See his Natural Science of Society (1957), p. 87.

  36. 36.

    In Continuities in the Study of Social Conflict (1967), p. 28.

  37. 37.

    See his From Simple Input to Complex Grammar (1986).

  38. 38.

    In Organization Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View (1985), p. 325.

  39. 39.

    In Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1934) Herbert Mead suggested that the process of social interrelations between the self and society as the “generalized others,” can be seen as the internalization and reflection of the interrelations between micro and macro levels. In fact, he went further to claim that these interrelations are reflected in the inner structure of the self. The self actually consists of two parts: the “I” part and the “Me” part. Both parts interact continuously to shape and form the actual self.

  40. 40.

    In Bass, Bernard M. (1988). “Evolving Perspectives on Charismatic Leadership.” In Conger and Kanungo (Eds.), p. 48.

  41. 41.

    Although on the other side of the dialectic, charismatic leaders soothe the human needs for meaning and symbolic order; and by constructing meaning, they are also a “creative” social force.

  42. 42.

    See Ralph Stodgill’s Individual Behavior and Group Achievement (1959).

  43. 43.

    This is in Talcott Parsons’s Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1964), pp. 358–359.

  44. 44.

    Examples of this treatment can be found in William Friedland’s “For a Sociological Concept of Charisma” (1964), Johannes Fabian’s “Charisma and Cultural Change” (1969), and Robert Tucker’s “The Theory of Charismatic Leadership” (1969).

  45. 45.

    In this regard, we think that Willner (1984) was correct in arguing that people tend to mix up various aspects of the phenomenon, such as possible antecedents (as social crisis) and possible outcomes (social change and mass revolution) with the mere definition of charisma.

  46. 46.

    In Runciman, Walter Garrison. (Ed). Weber: Selections in Translation (1978), Cambridge University Press, p. 23.

  47. 47.

    Weber ([1924] 1947) op. cit., p. 249.

  48. 48.

    Runciman and Matthews (1978) op. cit., p. 231.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., p. 230.

  50. 50.

    Weber says: “For all the vast differences in the areas in which they operate, the psychological origins of ideas are the same, whether they are religious, artistic, ethical, scientific or of any other kind: this is especially true of the organizing ideas of social and political life” (references in this paragraph are from Runciman 1978 op. cit., pp. 231–232).

  51. 51.

    See Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (1962), p. 183.

  52. 52.

    Berger speaks of this in Charisma and Religious Innovation: The Social Location of the Israelite prophecy (1963).

  53. 53.

    See Behavioral Dimensions of Charismatic Leadership (1988), p. 88.

  54. 54.

    Runciman and Matthews (1978) op. cit., p. 232.

  55. 55.

    For the purposes of anonymity, we used a code to refer to the numbering sequence of the interviews. The first letter (A/B/C/D/E) stands for the particular volume of interview transcriptions. The middle number represents the number of the interview in the particular volume, and the third number stands for the page number in the transcript of an interview. (Using this system, “B/10/8” would mean that the citation refers to volume “B,” interview number 10, page 8.) References in this paragraph come respectively from transcript B/10/8, B/10/9, The Business Times 22 November 1997, transcript D/16/8, and transcript D/16/15.

  56. 56.

    As we shall see later on, it is also a crucial component of the nature of their charisma. For the purpose of analytical clarity, we will try to make an ongoing distinction between reality deconstruction and reconstruction. However, we shall see in Chaps. 7–9 that the empirical data suggest that they are essentially inseparable.

  57. 57.

    The Weber reference is from ([1924] 1947), op. cit.; Shils (1965), op. cit., and Eisenstadt (1968), op. cit. For Sartre’s existentialism, see Existentialism and Humanism (1952); the Giddens’s reference comes from The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (1984); Berger’s constructivist phenomenology is in his works (Berger, 1967; Berger & Luckman, 1966; Berger & Kellner, 1981); for Klukhohn and Strodbeck, see their Variations in Value Orientations (1961); for Coser see his The Functions of Social Conflict (1956); and for Burns see his Leadership (1978).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Dayan Hava

  2. Chan Institute of Social Studies, Ap Lei Chau, Hong Hong

    Chan Kwok-bun

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  1. Dayan Hava
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Correspondence to Dayan Hava .

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Hava, D., Kwok-bun, C. (2012). Explaining Charisma: A Constructivist View. In: Charismatic Leadership in Singapore. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1451-3_4

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