Charismatic Leadership in the Chinese Enterprises: Construct Analysis and Scale Development
Author
Abstract
Within the last two decades, the issues related to charismatic leadership have gained public attentions. The relevant discussion and researches have been rising and flourishing. They all agreed that charismatic leadership has an extraneous influence to followers and has the power to initiate changes in the organizations. However, until now, scholars have not yet got a consensus on the dimensions of charismatic leadership behavior. It is necessary to develop an appropriate measurement of charismatic leadership based on its theoretical foundation. Therefore, in this research, we use three studies to explore the content of charismatic leadership in the context of Chinese enterprises and to develop an instrument of charismatic leadership behavior to carry out related issues in the future empirical research. In study 1, we applied the inductive approach to analyze the descriptions of charismatic leadership behavior from 144 employees in Taiwan. With the rigorous categorizing process, we obtained ten dimensions of charismatic leadership and their underline categories. In study 2, we developed a measurement scale of charismatic leadership behavior based on the result of study 1. By using 262 undergraduate students as the sample, we applied the cognitive sorting approach to test the construct validity of the developed scale. In study 3, using a sample of 341 employees in Taiwan, we conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, as well as item and internal consistency analysis for our charismatic leadership scale. The results showed that there is enough evidence to support the construct validity and internal consistency of the six-factor model of charismatic leadership. Finally, through the theoretical analysis, we identified three behavioral dimensions, i.e., model shaping, subordinate shaping, and culture shaping, and further compared our model with Western relevant researches to discuss the culture general and specific dimensions of charismatic leadership. Through these systematic serious studies, we hope that a better instrument of charismatic leadership behavior can be provided, which should help to illustrate, explain and predict the phenomenon of charismatic leadership in the Chinese business context.
