Leadership Now

Reflections on the Legacy of Boas Shamir

Israel Katz, Galit Eilam-Shamir, Ronit Kark, Yair Berson, Israel Katz, Galit Eilam-Shamir, Ronit Kark, Yair Berson

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781787432017
• eBook ISBN: 9781787432581
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

The late Boas Shamir made a significant contribution to the development of novel theories and frameworks in the leadership field. He became one of the most influential figures in leadership research, and left behind him an outstanding body of work.  

Leadership Now: Reflections on the Legacy of Boas Shamir incorporates some of Boas Shamir's most classic and significant works, and includes contributions from a group that represent the most influential leaders in the field, up and coming scholars, as well as students of Boas Shamir. The first part of the book focuses on Shamir's most influential work on the motivational effects of charismatic leaders. The second part follows with work on the charismatic relationship; reflecting the shift of Boas Shamir's work in the later parts of his career from a leader-centric focus to a closer examination of the relational aspects of leadership and the major effects followers have on the leadership process. The third part includes samples of this work on the role of the contextual factors in leadership.  

This volume aims to preserve Boas Shamir's legacy and inspire further generations of leadership scholars.

PART I

LEADER-CENTRIC APPROACHES

CHAPTER 1

THE MOTIVATIONAL EFFECTS OF CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP: A SELF-CONCEPT BASED THEORY¹

Boas Shamir, Robert J. House and Michael B. Arthur

ABSTRACT

The empirical literature on charismatic or transformational leadership demonstrates that such leadership has profound effects on followers. However, while several versions of charismatic leadership theory predict such effects, none of them explains the process by which these effects are achieved. In this paper we seek to advance leadership theory by addressing this fundamental problem. We offer a self-concept based motivational theory to explain the process by which charismatic leader behaviors cause profound transformational effects on followers. The theory presents the argument that charismatic leadership has its effects by strongly engaging followers’ self-concepts in the interest of the mission articulated by the leader. We derive from this theory testable propositions about (a) the behavior of charismatic leaders and their effects on followers, (b) the role of followers’ values and orientations in the charismatic relationship, and (c) some of the organizational conditions that favor the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leaders.

Keywords: Motivational effects; leadership; transformational; charismatic; visionary; inspirational

INTRODUCTION

In the past 15 years a new genre of leadership theory, alternatively referred to as “charismatic,” “transformational,” “visionary,” or “inspirational,” has emerged in the organizational literature (Bass, 1985; Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Boal & Bryson, 1988; Burns, 1978; Conger & Kanungo, 1987; House, 1977; Kuhnert & Lewis, 1987; Sashkin, 1988; Tichy & Devanna, 1986).

These theories focus on exceptional leaders who have extraordinary effects on their followers and eventually on social systems. According to this new genre of leadership theory, such leaders transform the needs, values, preferences and aspirations of followers from self-interests to collective interests. Further, they cause followers to become highly committed to the leader’s mission, to make significant personal sacrifices in the interest of the mission, and to perform above and beyond the call of duty. We refer to this new genre of theories as charismatic, because charisma is a central concept in all of them, either explicitly or implicitly.

Theories of charismatic leadership highlight such effects as emotional attachment to the leader on the part of the followers; emotional and motivational arousal of the followers; enhancement of follower valences with respect to the mission articulated by the leader; follower self-esteem, trust, and confidence in the leader; follower values; and follower intrinsic motivation.

The leader behavior specified by charismatic theories is different from the behavior emphasized in earlier theories of organizational leadership. The earlier theories describe leader behavior in terms of leader/follower exchange relationships (Graen & Cashman, 1975; Hollander, 1964), providing direction and support (Evans, 1970; House, 1971), and reinforcement behaviors (Ashour, 1982; Podsakoff, Todor, & Skov, 1982). In contrast, the new leadership theories emphasize symbolic leader behavior, visionary and inspirational messages, nonverbal communication, appeal to ideological values, intellectual stimulation of followers by the leader, display of confidence in self and followers, and leader expectations for follower self-sacrifice and for performance beyond the call of duty. Such leadership is seen as giving meaningfulness to work by infusing work and organizations with moral purpose and commitment rather than by affecting the task environment of followers, or by offering material incentives and the threat of punishment.

Research based on these theories has yielded an impressive set of findings concerning the effects of charismatic leaders on follower attitudes, satisfaction, and performance. However, there is no motivational explanation to account for the profound effects of such leaders, some of which are difficult to explain within currently dominant models of motivation. The purpose of this paper is to offer a motivational theory to account for the effects of charismatic leaders on their followers.

Empirical Evidence

In the last decade, at least 35 empirical investigations of charismatic leadership in organizations have been conducted. These studies relied on a variety of research methods, including two case studies (Roberts, 1985; Roberts & Bradley, 1988), two longitudinal observational studies (Trice & Beyer, 1986), numerous field surveys (for example, see Hater & Bass, 1988; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990; Smith, 1982; Yukl & Van Fleet, 1982), an analysis of behavior in a management game (Avolio, Waldman, & Einstein, 1988), three rigorous laboratory experiments (Howell & Frost, 1989; Kirkpatrick, 1992; Puffer, 1990), an interpretative analysis of interviews (Bennis & Nanus, 1985), a rigorous content analysis of interviews (Howell & Higgins, 1990), a rigorous analysis of historical archival information (House, Spangler, & Woycke, 1991), and four longitudinal analyses of the effects of leader behavior on U.S. Air Force Academy cadets (Curphy, 1990; Howell & Avolio, 1993; Keller, in press; Koene, Pennings, & Schreuder, 1991; Waldman & Ramirez, 1993).

These studies were conducted across a wide variety of samples, including students who served as laboratory subjects (Howell & Frost, 1989; Kirkpatrick, 1992; Puffer, 1990), military combat and noncombat leaders (Curphy, 1990; Yukl & Van Fleet, 1982), numerous samples of middle and lower level managers (for example, see Avolio & Bass, 1987; Bass & Yammarino, 1988; Hater & Bass, 1988; Smith, 1982; Waldman, Bass, & Einstein, 1987), world-class leaders of nations (Bass, Avolio, & Goodheim, 1987) educational leaders (Roberts, 1985; Roberts & Bradley, 1988; Sashkin, 1988), Asian Indian middle managers (Pereria, 1987) top-level corporate leaders (Bennis & Nanus, 1985), U.S. presidents (House et al., 1991), Dutch supermarket managers (Koene et al., 1991), educational administrators in Singapore (Koh, Terborg, & Steers, 1991), presidents of alcoholic rehabilitation organizations (Trice & Beyer, 1986), and emergent informal project champions (Howell & Higgins, 1990).

Space limitations prevent a detailed review of the findings of these studies (for reviews see Bass, 1990; House, Howell, Shamir, Smith, & Spangler, 1991). While the studies were not guided by a unified theoretical perspective, there is a considerable convergence of the findings from studies concerned with charismatic leadership and those concerned with transformational and visionary leadership. Collectively, these findings indicate that leaders who engage in the theoretical charismatic behaviors produce the theoretical charismatic effects. In addition, they receive higher performance ratings, have more satisfied and more highly motivated followers, and are viewed as more effective leaders by their superiors and followers than others in positions of leadership. Further, the effect size of charismatic leader behavior on follower satisfaction and performance is consistently higher than prior field study findings concerning other leader behavior, generally ranging well below 0.01 probability of error due to chance, with correlations frequently ranging in the neighborhood of 0.50 or better.

The Problem

Unfortunately, the literature on charismatic leadership does not provide an explanation of the process by which charismatic leadership has its profound effects. No motivational explanations are provided to explain how charismatic leaders bring about changes in followers’ values, goals, needs, and aspirations.

Three types of changes that have been emphasized by previous theories present a particular theoretical challenge. First, Burns (1978) and Bass (1985) suggested that transformational or charismatic leaders are able to elevate followers’ needs from lower to higher levels in the Maslow hierarchy. Second, Burns (1978) claimed that such leaders raise followers to higher levels of morality, to “more principled levels of judgment” (p. 455). Third, House (1977), Burns (1978) and Bass (1985) proposed that such leaders are successful in motivating followers to transcend their own self-interests for the sake of the team, the organization, or the larger polity. We shall refer to these effects as “the transformational effects of charismatic leadership.”

However, none of these theorists offers a motivational explanation that can account for these important effects. It is very difficult, for instance, to envision how any of the existing individual-focused theories of motivation – whether an exchange theory, a reinforcement theory, or a cognitive theory – can account for a transformation such as that called for by Kennedy in his famous challenge, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

The problem is that current theories of charismatic leadership claim that a variety of leadership behaviors transform followers from an individual-oriented, hedonistic, rational-economic mode of operation to a collective, moral, and value-oriented mode of operation. However, these claims cannot be accounted for by current psychological theories of motivation, which assumes either a rational-economic or a highly idiosyncratic need-satisfying model of human beings. Therefore, we need to supplement current theories of charismatic leadership with a motivational theory that will be able to better explain the relationships between leader behaviors and effects on followers, and account for the transformational effects of charismatic leaders.

In the following sections of this paper, we first present some assumptions about the motivational significance of the self-concept. We then show how charismatic leaders activate self-concept related motivations, and how these motivations can explain the effects that are not well explained by current theories. Following, we specify leader behaviors that are likely to activate these processes. We derive from our motivational analysis testable propositions about the effects of these behaviors on followers’ self-concepts, and their further effects on followers. We then discuss some follower attributes that moderate the hypothesized relationships. Finally, we specify organizational conditions under which charismatic leadership is likely to emerge and be effective.

ASSUMPTIONS

In this section, we explicate a set of assumptions which underlie the motivational theory which we then advance. In developing these assumptions, we have drawn mainly on Bandura’s (1986) Social-Cognitive Theory, Stryker’s (1980) Identity Theory, and Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Tajfel & Turner, 1985). For a more detailed account of these assumptions see Shamir (1991).

(a) Humans are not only pragmatic and goal-oriented but also self-expressive. We assume that behavior is not only instrumental calculative but also expressive of feelings, aesthetic values, and self-concepts. (For supporting empirical evidence, see Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton, 1981; Kinder & Sears, 1985; Prentice, 1987; Snyder & Ickes, 1985.) We “do” things because of what we “are,” because by doing them we establish and affirm an identity for ourselves. Making the assumption that humans are self-expressive enables us to account for behaviors that do not contribute to the individual’s self-interest, the most extreme expression of which is self-sacrifice (Strauss, 1969). Earlier theories of leadership addressed the instrumental aspects of motivation. We will argue later that charismatic leadersh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: From Leader-Centric to Collective Leadership
• Part I. Leader-Centric Approaches
• Part II. the Leader-Follower Relationship
• Part III. the Context of Leadership
• Part IV. Epilogue
• Index