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Through his call to “reverse the lens” in leadership, Shamir (2007) helped trigger the emergence of followership theory as a new field of study in leadership research. While followership theory brings exciting new opportunities to leadership studies, it also introduces theoretical and conceptual challenges for researchers. In this chapter we address these challenges by showing how followership can be positioned fully within the leadership construct. We extend Shamir’s (2007) call for a balanced view in leadership by showing how followership theory adds new perspectives on the ways in which we can study leadership as a dynamic, fluid, relational process. The alternative views we present (e.g., position, role, identity, constructionist, and co-creation) approach leadership study from a range of paradigmatic perspectives that allow us to more fully capture the behaviors, interactions, relational dynamics, and processes through which leadership and followership are created and constructed. We conclude by reflecting on Shamir’s legacy as a scholar, and the contributions he made through his willingness to not only open his mind, but also to constructively challenge alternative perspectives and views.

As CEOs now communicate with a wide variety of stakeholders, it has become increasingly difficult to ensure that the intended meaning of their messages is received. Boas Shamir focuses on how leaders engage in the management of meanings in order to (1) justify their actions and the changes they introduce to the organization; (2) recruit followers and motivate members of the organization to support their actions; and (3) create shared perceptions and interpretations so that members’ actions are guided by a common definition of the situation. Heike Bruch, Boas Shamir, and Galit Eilam-Shamir show how the leader of a large Swiss-based company actively managed the views, interpretations and energy of more than 100,000 employees through weekly e-mail letters when the company faced grave financial difficulties. Gretchen Spreitzer, Mary Sue Coleman, and Daniel Gruber show how an incoming university president dealt with an ongoing lawsuit regarding the university's use of affirmative action in its admissions processes and worked with various stakeholders to firmly establish the university's identity.

While organizationally relevant outcomes of charismatic leadership have been studied more extensively, we do not know as much about when and why followers attribute charisma to leaders. Drawing on the self-concept based motivational theory of charisma developed by Boas Shamir and colleagues, we propose that congruence between leaders and followers on a core characteristic, namely organizational identification plays an important role. When leaders are high on identification with the organization, they embody and communicate the values of the organization more strongly in their vision and behaviors, which is likely to affect the attribution of charisma to these leaders, but only for followers who themselves strongly identify with the organization. In contrast, those leaders low on organizational identification are more likely to communicate messages that appeal to followers who are similarly low on identification. A multi-source study in the healthcare sector largely supports our model as congruence between organizational identification levels of leaders and followers is positively linked to perceived charisma and, in turn, charisma relates to followers’ organizational citizenship behavior.

Serious questions have been raised regarding the necessity to continue focusing our research on what constitutes individual, or what the authors refer to as singular leadership. Although the authors consider these questions to be important to advancing the field of leadership theory, research, and practice, they also suggest that attempts to minimize the relevance of singular leadership may hinder progress in other domains of leadership research. In this chapter, the authors explore how and why singular leaders and their leadership matter, and how they may influence follower, peer, and organizational outcomes. The authors use a paradoxical framework to present a theoretical model and propositions that allow us to clarify the influence of different forms of singular leadership within organizations. In our examination of singular leadership, the authors consider both positive and harmful modes of attributes, cognitions, and behaviors.

In this paper, we first develop the concepts of authentic leaders, authentic leadership, and authentic leader development. We suggest a definition of authentic leaders, which is based on the leader’s self-concept: his or her self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, self-concordance, and person-role merger, and on the extent to which the leader’s self-concept is expressed in his or her behavior. Following, we offer a life-story approach to the development of authentic leaders. We argue that authentic leadership rests heavily on the self-relevant meanings the leader attaches to his or her life experiences, and these meanings are captured in the leader’s life-story. We suggest that self-knowledge, self-concept clarity, and person-role merger are derived from the life-story. Therefore, the construction of a life-story is a major element in the development of authentic leaders. We further argue that the life-story provides followers with a major source of information on which to base their judgments about the leader’s authenticity. We conclude by drawing some practical implications from this approach and presenting suggestions for further research.

The literature on charismatic leadership in organizations has neglected the organizational context in which such leadership is embedded. The purpose of this article is to enrich and refine charismatic leadership theory by linking it to its organizational context. We argue that while charismatic leadership principles and processes potentially apply across a wide variety of situations, the emergence and effectiveness of such leadership may be facilitated by some contexts and inhibited by others. We develop and present a series of propositions linking contextual variable to the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leadership. Among the contextual variable we examine are the organizational environment, life-cycle stage, technology, tasks, goals, structure, and culture, as well as the leader’s level in the organization and the circumstances surrounding his or her appointment.