Charisma

• Charismatic leaders increase obedience (followers obey without pause to reflect) with a clear vision, specific goals, emotional language, and providing clear reasons; but other situational/personal factors must be considered
• Classic studies of obedience shown we often obey regardless of the charisma of the authority: e.g. in Hofling’s study, the nurses obeyed simple telephone instructions and had no basis on to judge the doctor’s charisma; he was simply a ‘legitimate’ authority figure
• Geyer and Speyrer (1997): Measured the charisma of 116 Austrian bank managers using reports from 1456 bank employees and found a strong positive correlation between charisma and the productivity of the bank, thus it appears that introducing a charismatic manager is an extremely effective way of increasing productivity in a workforce
• Agency theory doesn’t take into account personality variables - some people might be naturally more predisposed to obey (authoritarian personality) and some people can get others to obey them even when they have little or no authority over them it is simply the force of their personality (charisma) which elicits obedience - obedience/dissent is a more complex process than is being explained by agency theory