Charismatic Leadership in Organizations: A Critique of Texts

History is full of examples of how the skilful use of language is a fundamental aspect of charismatic leadership. Traditionally, this phenomenon has been studied focusing on oratory skills. The book argues that the relationship between a leader and a follower has points of similarity to that which exists between a writer and a reader, and that in each case, former party is the agenda setter, but satisfactory outcomes require a mutual endeavor. Given that scholarly writing about management and organizations is inevitably a mix of the presentation of empirical truths and value judgements, the ability to engage the reader intellectually and emotionally is critical in the successful dissemination of disciplinary knowledge and belief claims. The book proposes a multi-faceted construct of textual charisma which is created through the use of metaphors, stories and personal accounts as well as the ancient construct of pistis and the contemporary notion of metadiscourse. The proposed framework provides guidance for management and organization studies’ authors seeking to present themselves as convincing and engaging writers.

Iga Maria Lehman is head of the Department of English Studies and the Department of Intercultural Communication at the University of Social Sciences in Warsaw. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the multidisciplinary journal Discourses on Culture. In her research, she adopts a critical, language-centered approach to analyze issues related to discursive leadership, sociocultural and linguistic marginalization, diversity of discourse communities, dialogical communication and uniqueness in scholarly writing. In recent years, she has been developing the concepts of ’reflexivity’, ’reader inclusion’ and ’textual charisma’ in the process of scholarly text construction. She has published a book and articles and chapters in journals and books from the fields of applied linguistics, management communication and organization studies.