Leadership: The demise and rebirth of charisma in public administration and management research

This chapter builds on recent scholarly efforts to discuss the conceptual roots of leader charisma, including how it has been studied to date. The chapter then reviews several contemporary efforts to demonstrate the impact of charisma on individuals’ attitudes, work outcomes, and its broader policy implications. Finally, the chapter discusses how charisma can be studied using experimental and observational designs as well as how it can be cultivated as part of leadership development programs. The chapter argues that future public leadership research on charisma would do well to 1) focus on the unique and specific behaviors that engender leader charisma, 2) study its causal effect on individual and collective outcomes, and 3) facilitate ways to make charisma a learnable skill to be cultivated among existing and future leaders across all levels of government.