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Concept
Charismatic authority
Summary
Charismatic authority is a concept of leadership developed by the German sociologist Max Weber. It involves a type of organization or a type of leadership in which authority derives from the charisma of the leader. This stands in contrast to two other types of authority: legal authority and traditional authority. Each of the three types forms part of Max Weber's tripartite classification of authority.
Charism
"Charisma" is an ancient Greek term that initially gained prominence through Saint Paul's letters to the emerging Christian communities in the first century. In this context, it generally referred to a divinely-originating "gift" that demonstrated the authority of God within the early leaders of the Church. Max Weber took this theological notion and generalized it, viewing it as something that followers attribute, thereby opening it up for use by sociologists who applied it to political, military, celebrity, and non-Christian religious contexts. Other terms used are "charismatic domination" and "charismatic leadership".
Weber applies the term charisma to
[A] certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader ... How the quality in question would be ultimately judged from an ethical, aesthetic, or other such point of view is naturally indifferent for the purpose of definition.This definition, however, does not get to the crux of what charisma is, making the concept as defined by Weber unscientific and impossible to measure or to manipulate . In the modern era, psychologists have defined charisma in terms of its outcomes (i.e., charismatic leaders are highly effective). Whether from a Weberian or psychological conceptualization, it is problematic to not define a construct scientifically .
Official source
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