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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 purpose of this study is to identify factors that approach and that separate the Brazilian bureaucracy from the model advocated by Max Weber. Efforts were concentrated on the discussion of aspects of historical and social foundations of society and the Brazilian state that influence its bureaucracy and in the reforms undertaken in the state apparatus. The authors selected some of its iconic moments, within the framework of patrimonialism, seeking to identify evidence of its influence in Brazilian public administration.

This study is qualitative and has interpretative background with descriptive purposes. The whole process of research was based on the literature. The interpretation of data relied on content analysis based on Bardin.

The study reveals that the prevailing bureaucratic model in Brazil, although it contains some characteristics of rational-legal model, is not yet produced the expected disenchantment, at least in public administration. In addition, it was noted that the patrimonialism bases, in which society and the Brazilian State still rely, seems to prevent the bureaucracy that was advocated by Max Weber from installing fully.

Studies dealing with bureaucracy in the context of public administration are still welcome and necessary in Brazil. This is because this country still does not admit the bureaucracy to function according to the model advocated by Max Weber.

The analysis of organizations has a debt vis-à-vis the sociologist Max Weber who built its theoretical foundations. The concept of limited rationality was later proposed by Herbert Simon and then followed by sociologists of organizations. This paper tries to go beyond that approach. It uses a psychoanalytical perspective based on Jacques Lacan's work and on the case studies of two high-tech companies. We focus on signifiers and the role of the unconscious process inside organizations. We then propose an alternative model of interpretation of organizational dynamics different from the mainstream, which is dominated by the reference to instrumental rationality.

It is appropriate to begin with some observations on the development of Public Administration, for the development of Comparative Public Administration and its present problems are most clearly viewed in historical perspective: The logical problems are related to a chronological development.

Analysts of modern-day sub-Saharan Africa have argued that its “neopatrimonial regimes,” descending from pre-colonial polities, translate badly to the scale of the nation-state and hinder democratic accountability. In this paper, I argue by contrast that the problem with today’s failed or failing states is that they are not patrimonial enough, if we understand patrimonialism in classic Weberian terms as a system based on traditions of reciprocal interdependence between rulers and citizens, and characterized by personal but malleable ruling networks. I make this argument by showing how the Asante Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries shifted from a working model, incorporating both patrimonial and bureaucratic forms of authority, to an exploitative one that reneged on its traditional commitments to the wider public. The cause of this shift was the expansion of exchange with European nations as a rival avenue to power and wealth. This problem continues today, where African rulers are incentivized by the demands of global banks, the United Nations, and G20 governments rather than internal authority traditions, thus limiting their ability to establish locally effective and publically accountable hybrids of patrimonial and bureaucratic governance.

While some institutionalists have highlighted the explanatory power of organizational actors, others stress their social construction. In line with the latter perspective, the author states in the first part that, except from meta-theoretical reflections, the social sciences tend to utilize actor concepts without further reflection. The author also shows how actors are reproduced in social practice, excessively in media semantics and more rigid in legal affairs, and that experts and professional helpers constantly reproduce actor images and identities. The second part focuses on the differences between the three dominant types of actors: states, organizations, and individuals. Although rationalization constructs the three different types of actors, which share much in common as institutionally derived entities, each type – still – has its own distinctive qualities: welfare issues are crucial for states; emotional qualities are a characteristic feature of individuals; and stakeholder sensitivity is paramount for organizational actors.

This study is designed to explore the process of integration and ethnic identity among South Asian immigrants in Norway. In this study I examine the extent to which different factors such as, time since migration, receptiveness of the host society, position in the labor market, schools, social networks, and interaction with the host society, contribute to immigrants’ integration and the construction of their identity in a multicultural society like Norway. Based on ethnographic methods including unstructured interviews of first-generation South Asian immigrants and their children in Norway, three different levels of integration are explained. The first level involves high ethnic identity and low integration and relates to first-generation immigrants who have accepted that a permanent return to their home country is impossible. The second level of integration is related to high ethnic identity and high integration. The individuals in this category are second-generation immigrants who are integrated into Norwegian society, while maintaining a high ethnic identity by strong allegiance to their parental norms and values. The third level is low integration and low ethnic identity and explained in terms of identity crisis, which sometimes causes an internal turmoil and disorientation for many immigrants.

The state of contemporary theory in administration is contentious. This is most evident in the subset of educational administration where controversy rages as evidenced in the Griffiths‐Greenfield debate and its variations. To some extent this argument can be understood through tendencies which Whitehead described as simplemindedness and muddleheadedness but at a more elementary and fundamental level the divergences of opinion can be traced to defects in conceptual mapping. One of these has to do with the taxonomy of administrative process. The article offers a brief listing and critique of attempts at process analysis and then suggests a version (P3M3) which would avoid errors of logical typing and which would allow for a more sophisticated and logically accurate treatment of the terrain. This postulates a non‐rigid and elisible sequence from philosophy through planning, politics, mobilization, and management to monitoring and evaluative feedback. Such a sequence is consistent with conventional wisdom on the politics‐administration and administration‐management distinctions but it affords the possibility for some clinical diagnosis of organizational pathology and for the re‐interpretation of administrative practice. In particular, the article draws attention to the match between the taxonomy and cognitive, value, and reality correlates. Cognitive correlates are based on the work of deBono while value and reality correlates are based on the work of the writer. An important implication of the logic is the peculiar significance of the “synapse” or connection between the fields of administration and management. Leadership would appear to be a function which occurs in mid‐cycle rather than in the Platonic or orthodox view which places it at the initiation of cyclic process.

This chapter examines one of the most contested issues in Public Administration, namely political–administrative relationships. The first part of the chapter begins with a brief overview of the features of an ideal-type bureaucracy. Next is a literature review of political–administrative relationships. This is followed by an analysis of typologies of political–administrative relationships, with particular reference to developing countries. The second part of the chapter analyses the evolution of political–administrative relationships since the dawn of South African democracy in 1994. It examines the growing politicisation of the public service, the weakening of the powers of public officials vis-a-vis Ministers and the emasculation of the PSC. Data indicate that the government is unable to fill posts at the Senior Management Service (SMS) level and that there are a high number of acting HoDs, an indicator of instability. Finally, it uses Dasandi and Esteve’s typology of political–administrative relationships in developing countries to interpret the South African case.

The purpose of this paper is to sharpen the intellectual identity of the field of educational administration (EA) and to understand its scholarly boundaries by comparing between the writings of this field and those of the field of organisational behaviour (OB), an area of study usually located in faculties of management, and share many commonalities with EA.

A qualitative content analysis of textbooks and journal papers in OB and EA, reading of previous writings that revolved around the epistemological dimensions of these fields.

The author sheds light on the theoretical and empirical distinctions of OB and EA historically and provides insight into the distinctive intellectual identity of the latter field during the 2000s. A special attention is given to paradigms and theories in EA imported to the field from outside and transformed in a way that specify the unique identity of EA in the academic world.

This comparison is warranted in order to clarify more profoundly the unique contributions of EA, both theoretically and practically, to emphasise the differences that separate it from other disciplines, and to legitimate its independent position in higher education.