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... ary. Such leaders are often very successful. They have visions and can communicate them successfully to their followers by linking them with the innermost desires of the followers, thus making these visions appealing to the followers and motivating them to work towards the visions.
The reason why past research has almost always assumed that if a leader is charismatic, he / she is also a visionary could be that, most of the leaders that were studied by researchers on were very prominent, successful and effective ones with big followings, e. g. , Martin Luther King. These leaders not only had charisma, but also had vision. Consequently, most of the charismatic leadership studies often conclude that in order for a leader to be charismatic, one of the pre-requisites is that he / she must also be visionary (Weber, 1947; House, 1977; Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Conger and Kanungo, 1987). However, we think that these leaders should not be described as merely charismatic but as both charismatic and visionary. Contrary to Webers belief, some leadership scholars have suggested that charisma is not exclusive to people at the upper echelons of organisations and that charisma can be found throughout an organisation and in varying degrees among individuals (House, 1977; Bass, 1985; Boal and Bryson, 1987; Conger and Kanungo, 1987; Avolio and Bass, 1988; Hater and Bass, 1988; Yam marino and Bass, 1990; Shamir, House and Arthur, 1993).
Avolio and Yanirnarino (1990) also noted that charisma is not necessarily an either-or phenomenon. The ability to generate visions may also vary among leaders. Visions are developed from a leaders knowledge, expertise and his / her analysis of the information presented to him / her . Since the level and amount of knowledge, expertise, experience, analytical ability and creativity that a leader possesses may vary between leaders, it follows that the ability of individual leaders to generate visions should vary as well.
In this study, the visions generated by leaders are assumed to be good and beneficial as opposed to those that are detrimental to followers. We think that the first step in delving deeper into the nature of charisma and vision is to determine the extent to which these two constructs can be isolated. Thus, our first hypothesis is as follows: Hypothesis 1: Charisma and vision are two distinct constructs and can be separated for analysis. It is not difficult to see why some of the most common examples of successful and effective leaders are both highly charismatic and visionary.
Such leaders have innovative ideas and are not only able to win followers over with their ideas but also able to motivate them to achieve the visions. Roueche et al. (1989) found that vision appeared to be the main catalytic component that allowed transformational leaders to be successful (Hong et al. , 1996). Bennis and Nanus (1985), in their study of ninety transformational leaders spanning five years, found that all the effective transformational leaders had a vision of a desirable future for their organization. Several scholars (e. g. , Conger et al. , 1997; Kets de Vries, 1998) believe that vision without charisma will not result in follower ship. This arises because followers must first feel committed in their heart to the leader before accepting the leaders vision.
Leaders who are low on both charisma and vision are expected to be the least effective because they do not have great ideas for the organization, nor do they have the ability to convincingly lead and motivate their followers. As for the remaining categories of leaders, they are either visionary but not charismatic or charismatic but not visionary and are expected to be moderately effective. Leaders who are only visionary will not be able to lead and motivate followers towards the vision, while followers of charismatic leaders with no vision may soon realize the incompetence of their leaders and lose interest and faith in their leadership. Therefore, we hypothesize that: Hypothesis 2: The higher the charisma and vision of leaders, the greater the motivation, satisfaction, commitment and performance of followers. DISCUSSION The major thesis of this study was that charisma and vision are two independent constructs and that leaders have to have both charisma and vision to achieve motivated, satisfied, committed, and high performing followers. Broadly, the evidence revealed here supported this thesis.
In addition to clearly separating vision and charisma as constructs, the results also indicated that both vision and charisma were both composed of two distinct sub-dimensions. The first charisma construct reflected the importance of social skills and the ability of the leader to relate with and get along with subordinates while the second construct reflected distinctive characteristics of a charismatic leader such as charm, dynamism, and gift of the gab. Thus, these results showed that charisma encompasses both charismatic behaviours and traits. The findings are consistent with the view of House et al (1991) and many other authors that charisma has an innate side to it. This aspect coupled with the behavioral side of charisma through communicating and influencing others bring about a larger than life image of the leader who can motivate followers and create greater commitment and satisfaction in them. Similarly vision also had two constructs, one pertaining to the expertise and analytical ability of leaders and the other to the visionary and futuristic orientation of the leader.
From the two vision factors, it can be seen that not only expertise, good judgment, intelligence and analytical ability were important requisites for vision but also a certain ability to visualize the future and think strategically were equally critical for an individual to be considered visionary. The expertise and analytical skills factor had the highest mean score (mean, 4. 46), followed by social sensitivity, futuristic orientation (mean, 4. 20 for both), and charismatic traits (mean, 3. 99). The mean scores on the four leadership constructs indicate that Singapore managers generally are rated higher in terms of expertise, followed by their ability to build good relationships with subordinates and their future orientation, and lastly their charismatic traits. This could mean that managers in Singapore are viewed as analytical leaders but not so much as charismatic ones by their subordinates. Or maybe that the emphasis of Singaporeans when developing their leadership qualities is not on enhancing charismatic traits or that charismatic traits to subordinates are not critical attributes in a good leader.
We analyzed the relationships between four dimensions of leadership with four outcomes using three techniques. The objective was to understand the above relationships thoroughly from various perspectives. Our analysis suggests that social sensitivity of the managers has strong effect on motivation and satisfaction levels of subordinates but no significant impact on their commitment and output levels. Charismatic traits have somewhat modest direct effects on motivation and commitment levels of subordinates. On the visionary side of the leadership, expertise and analytical ability of the leaders had modest effects on three outcomes, motivation, satisfaction, and output but no significant effect on commitment. It was the visionary and futuristic orientation of leaders that clearly affected motivation, satisfaction, and commitment levels of subordinates.
Further, Listed analysis suggested that the four leadership dimensions affected the output levels of subordinates via greater motivation and commitment from their subordinates. Results from latter analysis are especially intuitively appealing as they showed how the four leadership dimensions worked through followers internal psychological processes to drive their performance. Our final ANOVA analyses provided evidence that there are synergetic effects between vision and charisma on follower motivation, commitment, satisfaction and performance outcomes. The two charismatic dimensions enhanced each others effect greatly on motivation and commitment levels of subordinates. Further, charismatic traits, expert and analytical ability, and future visioning ability enhanced each others effect on motivation levels of subordinates. These synergistic effects point to the power of charismatic leadership on followers when charisma is combined with powerful vision to influence followers.
NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Stephen P. Robbins (2001): Organizational Behavior. 9 th Ed. Prentice Hall. 2. Nancy J. Adler (1986): International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior.
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