who wants to follow the leader? using personality and work value profiles to predict preferences for charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic styles of leading

Despite the contributions of charismatic and transformational theories, their universal applicability has recently been called into question. dovetailing this debate is a growing interest in followers. we contribute to these discussions by examining the impact of follower individual difference profiles on preferences for charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic styles of leading. drawing on weber’s (1924) taxonomy of managerial authority in its reconceptualized form as the charismatic-ideological-pragmatic (cip) model, we conducted a vignette study in which 415 working adults first completed an online survey assessing their personality and work values. eight weeks later, a second survey asked them to read a fictional scenario about an organization and three speeches depicting each leader’s style. participants then indicated their leader preference, which we sought to predict using their personality and work values profiles. results of discriminant function analyses indicated certain linear combinations of personality and work values variables discriminated between participants’ leader preferences.