Boas Shamir, Robert J. House and Michael B. Arthur
INTRODUCTION
In the past 15 years a new genre of leadership theory, alternatively referred to as âcharismatic,â âtransformational,â âvisionary,â or âinspirational,â 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 leaderâs 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 followersâ 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 followersâ 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 âmore principled levels of judgmentâ (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 âthe transformational effects of charismatic leadership.â
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 â whether an exchange theory, a reinforcement theory, or a cognitive theory â can account for a transformation such as that called for by Kennedy in his famous challenge, âAsk not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.â
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 followersâ 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.
