Not all charisma is created equal: socialized vs personalized charismatic leadership and subordinates' career growth
Xiao-Yu Liu, Yangyang Fan, Caiting Yu, Juan DuPurpose
This study aims to examine how socialized and personalized charismatic leadership differentially shape subordinates' career growth opportunities (CGO), providing new insights into leadership's role in career development.
Design/methodology/approach
We collected three-wave, matched supervisor–subordinate dyadic data from 523 subordinates and 111 supervisors in a large, Shanghai-based state-owned multi-industry enterprise group.
Findings
Results indicate that socialized charismatic leadership promotes subordinates' learning goal orientation (LGO), thereby enhancing their CGO, whereas personalized charismatic leadership undermines LGO and, consequently, hinders CGO. Environmental turbulence attenuates the negative effect of personalized charismatic leadership on LGO and its indirect effect on CGO.
Practical implications
Organizations should differentiate between socialized and personalized charismatic leadership in selection and development, deliberately fostering leadership practices that promote employees' LGO. Leaders should develop reflective awareness of their power motives and model learning-oriented behaviors, particularly in turbulent environments. Employees can advance their career development through self-directed learning and developmental resources beyond direct leader support. At the policy level, institutionalizing socialized charismatic leadership holds promise for strengthening organizational resilience amid environmental uncertainty.
Originality/value
This study advances leadership and career development research by disentangling the divergent effects of socialized and personalized charismatic leadership on subordinates' CGO. Challenging the prevailing assumption that charismatic leadership uniformly benefits subordinates, we demonstrate that its effects hinge on leaders' underlying power motives. Moving beyond a “charisma-as-signal” perspective, we identify LGO as a key psychological mechanism and environmental turbulence as a boundary condition, offering a nuanced understanding of how and when the two faces of charismatic leadership shape CGO and extending charismatic leadership theory to the career development literature.