Theory and Practice in Transformational and Charismatic Leadership Research and Leaders’ Tenures

תקציר

Both charismatic and transformational leadership theories explain transformative changes engendered by two leadership types undifferentiated by much research although their originators, Weber and Burns (respectively), analyzed distinct phenomena. Oligarchy theory and leadership life cycle theory (Hambrick and Fukutomi, 1991) predict that with success and tenure transformational leaders become conservative dysfunctional, but did not offer a plausible combination by which formerly high-moral transformational leaders mislead both followers and students to view them as charismatic though practicing low-moral oligarchic dysfunctional conservatism for decades. Longitudinal ethnographies of various units in the Israeli kibbutz field exposed and explain such misleading, supporting the critique of mixing these leadership types, pointing to its dangers, and supporting Burns’s (1978) emphasis on transformational leaders’ high morality ignored by many students. The untangled problematic combination calls for new democratic succession norms that would replace such leaders before becoming impossible.