Mumford et al. (2009)are not primarily concerned with measurement issues.
Rather, they focus on developing a theory about when charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders emerge, and when they perform well, taking into account contextual variables at the individual, group, organiza-tional, and environmental levels that will influence emergence and perfor-mance. TheHunt and Davis (2009)commentary directly speaks to this issue, focusing on the propositions proposed.
Hunt and Davis focus on the unique propositions that would account for the emergence and performance of charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders. Essentially, they ask a question about differential validity. Broadly speaking, these authors find the evidence acquired for this differential validity of these three styles compelling. That said, we would caution readers with regard to the application of differential validity arguments in part based on the theory at hand and in part based on the status of current research.
The theory on which the charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leadership styles were based is, ultimately, a general theory of outstanding leadership. As noted earlier, this theory holds that all outstanding leaders emerge under conditions of crisis, where the crisis conditions require sense making, and this sense making is held to depend on the viability of the
mental models formulated. Charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders alike emerge under these kinds of crisis conditions. Moreover, their performance is ultimately based on the quality or viability of the mental models used in sense making. Of course, this observation implies that we need studies, far more studies than are currently available, examining key attributes of crises, sense-making activities engaged in at the individual and social levels, and the characteristics of viable mental models. In fact, we believe that studies examining these cross-style variables may prove as important, if not more important, than studies contrasting charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leadership.
We suspect that Hunt and Davis (2009) would agree with this point.
However, they argue that by proposing charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic styles,Mumford et al. (2009)essentially have proposed a model in which differential propositions are critical to assessing the validity of the theory. When one reads the theoretical basis for these three styles, we believe this assumption is questionable.
AsMumford (2006)has pointed out, these styles differ not in their basic elements, all mental models involve assumptions about causation, but rather in their specific instantiation of these elements (e.g., positive vs. negative causes, people as causes vs. situations as causes) and the organization of these elements in the creation of a mental model. What is noteworthy about this observation is that the mental models of charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders are not viewed as independent entities, but instead are observed as overlapping entities. Thus, both charismatic and pragmatic leaders focus on external causes in formulating their mental models, whereas ideological leaders focus more on internal crises. Similarly, although pragmatic leaders focus on the present, exactly what constitutes ‘‘the present’’ is subject to vagaries in the time frame applied (Jaques, 1976). As a result, pragmatic leaders may, in forming mental models, like charismatics, consider the future. The implication of this observation, of course, is that distinctions between charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders cannot be absolute but rather will be based on a pattern of effects (Mumford, Stokes, & Owens, 1990). This observation, in turn, leads one to question whether differential hypothesis formation and testing will be desirable as Hunt and Davis (2009)would assume.
Perhaps even more fundamental to Hunt and Davis’s critique is their argument with regard to the pattern of hypothesis formation. More specifically, unique hypotheses were not formulated with respect to each style of leadership at each level. At one level, this is a fair criticism. On another level, we would caution readers against accepting this argument too
quickly. More specifically, Mumford et al. (2009) formulated hypotheses based on the available evidence to clarify similarities and differences across leader types – charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic.
What should be recognized here is that discussion of charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leadership as a set of distinct styles is a recent event. Often adequate evidence is not available concerning ideological and pragmatic leaders. Although evidence is often available for charismatic leaders, it is rare for studies to have contrasted charismatic leaders with ideological and pragmatic leaders. Although we recognize this inherent limitation of the Mumford, Hunter, Friedrich, and Caughron’s effort, we hope this effort, and the commentaries of Hunt and Davis as well as Simonton will provide the impetus for future studies intended to address this issue.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Sam Hunter and Katrina Bedell-Avers for their contributions to the present effort.
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