Weber and the Neo-Charismatic

WEBER AND THE NEO-CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP PARADIGM: A RESPONSE TO BEYER

Robert J. House*

University of Pennsylvania

I am very pleased to be able to comment on Professor Janice Beyer’s article in The Leadership Quarterly Special Issue. Part I (vol. 10. no. 2, pp. 307-330). Beyer is to be commended for her insightful critique of the charismatic-transformational leadership literature and for her thorough exposition of the Weberian conception of charisma. As will become apparent, I am in agreement with some of what Beyer has said and in disagreement with several of the assertions she has advanced. For the sake of clarity, I believe it is appropriate to contrast Weherinn charisma from charisma as defined by organizational behavior scholars. Following the sociological tradition, Beyer (1999) uses the term charisma rather than charismatic leadership because she views charisma as an emergent social structure. Beyer cites Scott’s (1981, p. 33) definition of charisma as ‘I. . . an unusual form of normative social structure that emerges in times of crisis. when people look to charismatic individuals who are ‘perceived as possessing extraordinary gifts of spirit and mind’ to lead them through the crisis with ‘radical reorganizations”’ (p. 310). Trite and Beyer (I 986, pp. 118-l 19) summarized Weber’s (1947) theory as including five elements: (1) an extraordinarily gifted person. (2) a social crisis or situation of desperation, (3) a set of ideas providing a radical solution to the crisis. (4) a set of followers who are attracted to the exceptional person and come to believe that he or she is directly linked to transcendent powers, and (5) the validation of that person’s extraordinary gifts and transcendence by repeated successes. They viewed charisma as a sociological phenomenon tha emerged from the interaction of all of t these elements, and argued that all of them must be present to some degree for charisma to occur.

*Direct all correspondence to: Robert J. House, Fels...