Charisma and Organizational Change

Ben Castleberry

Dr. Wendy Walker: Article Analysis

Charisma and Organizational change: A multilevel study of perceived charisma, commitment of change, and team performance

The purpose of this study is to see if charisma or perceived charisma have any impact on team performance during times of organizational change. In order to accomplish this, the researchers wanted to answer two questions. What makes followers perceive leaders as charismatic? And how does the charismatic relationship occur? Specifically seeking a better understanding of how perceived charisma affects individual followers and how it directs them to achieve higher performance. This research is one of the first to focus on both top-down relationships between leaders and followers and bottom-up relationships between individual followers and their teams. Most existing studies just focused processes at the team level or charisma traits of leaders. The literature review in the study was by Conger and Kanungo; they developed a three stage model that insisted followers perceive charisma when leaders display three distinct behaviors. First leaders evaluate resources and needs, second they form and communicate goals to the followers, and third they build trust in the goals and demonstrate through their own actions the goals can be obtained. They also stressed a leader has to make it clear up front why change is needed and must also make a case for the urgency of the needed change. This study developed four hypotheses. The first hypothesis predicts a positive relationship between a follower's perception of a leader's charisma and the leaders change promoting behavior. The second hypothesis predicts a positive relationship between commitment to change and perceived charisma. The third hypothesis predicts a positive relationship between commitment to change and a team's performance. The fourth hypothesis predicts the leader's behaviors toward change will indirectly affect team performance through the follower's perceptions of the leader's commitment to change and charisma. This study collected data from a large railway firm in Germany undergoing a major restructuring that affected the entire company. Departments were eliminated and manager responsibilities at all levels were redefined or changed. All functional units of the company participated in the reorganization. The company allowed the researcher's access to 45 team leaders and 300 team members. All of those were sent an online survey and there was an 80% response rate. There were anonymity rules set in place for teams who had single respondents, that data was deleted. In the end 33 leaders and 142 subordinates responded to the surveys to capture the leader's behavior and team member's perceptions of the leader's charisma and the individual team member's commitment to change, and overall team performance during change. In conclusion this study was well researched, well planned, and well executed. The researchers developed four hypothesis in an area that hasn't been researched much, those hypothesis would be tested using detail gathered from a single company going through substantial change in order to view the leaders, followers, teams and the affect that perceived charisma had on performance during this change process.

The strength of this study is the complete buy-in from the company allowing the researchers to obtain data without any influence from the company, allowing access to both managers and their team members. A second strength of the study is