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The aim of this chapter is to argue that charisma is a collective representation, and that charismatic authority is a social status that derives more from the “recognition” of the followers than from the “magnetism” of the leaders. I contend further that a close reading of Max Weber shows that he, too, saw charisma in this light.

I develop my argument by a close reading of many of the most relevant texts on the subject. This includes not only the renowned texts on this subject by Max Weber, but also many books and articles that interpret or criticize Weber’s views.

I pay exceptionally close attention to key arguments and texts, several of which have been overlooked in the past.

Writers for whom charisma is personal magnetism tend to assume that charismatic rule is natural and that the full realization of democratic norms is unlikely. Authority, in this view, emanates from rulers unbound by popular constraint. I argue that, in fact, authority draws both its mandate and its energy from the public, and that rulers depend on the loyalty of their subjects, which is never assured. So charismatic claimants are dependent on popular choice, not vice versa.

I advocate a “culturalist” interpretation of Weber, which runs counter to the dominant “personalist” account. Conventional interpreters, under the sway of theology or mass psychology, misread Weber as a romantic, for whom charisma is primal and undemocratic rule is destiny. This essay offers a counter-reading.

The increasing prevalence and availability of big data represent a potentially revolutionary development for human resource management (HRM) scholars. Despite this, the current literature provides eclectic and often contradictory guidance for scholars attempting to conceptualize big data and subsequently incorporate it into relevant theoretical frameworks. The authors attempt to bridge this gap by discussing key considerations relevant to understanding and integrating big data into the existing theoretical landscape. Building on a novel, integrative definition of big data, the authors propose a parsimonious theoretical framework utilizing the established dimensions of complexity and dynamism as meta-attributes to bring order to the various attributes that have been proposed as central to defining big data (e.g., volume, variety, velocity, and variability). Throughout, the authors highlight numerous theoretical and empirical opportunities and considerations that this perspective holds for future HRM scholarship.

In this chapter the author discusses some insights lost in a lost ethnomethodological study of parkour. The author introduces parkour, before critically engaging with some of the existing theoretical treatments of the practice. The author then considers some of the materials drawn on by those existing studies in reconsidering what is getting done in ‘parkour talk’. In further outlining what was lost, the author considers some of the aspects of the study that would have positioned parkour in terms of its engaging ordinariness. The chapter concludes with a summary of these avenues of inquiry and closes with a plea for the continued recognition of basic social inquiry and ethnography.

The growth of organized labor during the latter part of the nineteenth century triggered an organizational impulse on the part of employers across the country. Although some employers’ associations began as “negotiatory” bodies engaged in collective bargaining, the vast majority of them shifted toward a more “belligerent” approach. Academic scholarship has generally focused on the belligerents at the national level. Recently, some scholars have begun to study organized employers at the community level, but they continue to feature the more typical staunchly anti-union associations. This study of Columbus, Ohio's master printers’ association reveals a different pattern of local labor relations during the years between 1887 and 1960 – an association that had generally smooth bargaining relationships with craft unions. Columbus’ conservative and sheltered economy enabled the longstanding cooperative shared printing craft culture to thrive. But changes in Columbus’ economy, shifts in larger patterns of industrial relations, the hard-line influence of the national employers’ association, and technological changes altered the context of local labor relations. The result was that, by 1960, the Columbus association sought the upper hand in labor relations by becoming a more traditional and belligerent employers’ association. This story of “latecomers” adds to our understanding of organized employer behavior under different historical periods and circumstances.

In all its stages, qualitative research inhabits a visible world. Yet the use of visual data across the life of a research project is a visual span seldom considered in the methodological literature (Albrecht, 1985; Brannen, 2002). From a study largely based on observation and interviews in which visual data did not feature at the outset, we illustrate this longer perspective by focussing on two aspects of span. One refers to the inclusion of visual data throughout a project, from the search for a research setting to the final stage of dissemination. The other concerns the more frequent approach that includes a mix of visual methods, ranging from visual documents of film and photographs (Denzin, 1989) to other visual images and sights fleetingly observed. We argue that to use our eyes in the peripheral as well as the central data gathering stages, and to glean data from what is incidentally noticed as well as harvested with specific visual tools, generate an extended sociological understanding. The visual widens the window on the world of those being studied, bringing the intricacies of their lives closer to both researcher and audience. In this latter regard, we note the value of visual data at the dissemination stage, particularly for audiences of practitioners and those with interests in policy formation.

In this article Professor Perry argues that Plessy v. Ferguson and the de jure segregation it heralded has overdetermined the discourse on Jim Crow. She demonstrates through a historical analysis of activist movements, popular literature, and case law that private law, specifically property and contract, were significant aspects of Jim Crow law and culture. The failure to understand the significance of private law has limited the breadth of juridical analyses of how to respond to racial divisions and injustices. Perry therefore contends that a paradigmatic shift is necessary in scholarly analyses of the Jim Crow era, to include private law, and moreover that this shift will enrich our understandings of both historic and current inequalities.