This case will focus on the computer consultancy company, CCC, and first treat leadership during the formative years of the company and then go on to address the notion of charisma. I will then provide an account of leadership in a post-formative phase. (For details of the study, see Alvesson, 1995.) Leadership During the Foundation and Expansion of the Company The three founders of CCC headed it for the first 78 years of its (at the time of my study) 10- year history, and exercised a very strong influence on the ideas, beliefs and values that subsequently characterized the organization. According to the subordinates, the founders exhibited energy, enthusiasm, easy availability and an engaging and supporting attitude to the employees. One had a management that was very engaged. You had direct contact with the management. The management always was ready, always was available and always listened. You always got a motive. The founders expressed a strong interest in the employees. Good performance was noted, acknowledged and communicated within the organization. Often a bottle of champagne was opened to celebrate the achievement. The founders succeeded in tying together the everyday life of the personnel with the company's activities on a larger scale. The personnel felt that they were a part of the centre of the company, not only in different consultancy projects, but also in ideas and business development, including contracts on new projects, joint ventures and acquisitions of companies. When we had morning meetings one of the owners was always there. We got a lot of inside information. On the present development, etc. We felt very much a part of what was happening. The sphere of social influence that leadership in corporations normally encompasses was broadened by the founders of CCC. Through the dramatization of information, employees felt close to the running of the company and part of an inner, trusted circle. Through frequent participation in social activities, also outside normal working time, an employee's leisure time became, to some extent, a part of corporate life, a beneficial experience of community and knowledge-sharing. As we will see below, the ethos of the founders was shared broadly in the organization and also guided the work of subsequent managers. The founders may well be seen as initiators of an organizational culture. For their subordinates this was partly a consequence of the charismatic qualities of the founders. It may be tempting to emphasize the heroic qualities and the leader-driven nature of cultural patterns in the company, but, as stated, it is important to consider also the social and cultural context in order to avoid a one-sided understanding. The computer consultancy business was, at the time, young and expanding. Of course not all companies were successful, but the expansion possibilities facilitated the distribution of positive, interesting and dynamic atmosphere. In CCC, as in the rest of the industry, employees were mainly relatively young and well-educated, providing a good basis for feelings of organization-wide community, an interest in social activities after work, and so on. Swedish societal patterns are comparatively informal and non-hierarchical, providing a valuebasis for interaction between hierarchical levels. CCC was not entirely unique in the cultural orientations that developed but showed some resemblance to other companies in the industry. The founders still were, compared to most other management styles, highly influential in creating and shaping a particular version of organization culture, with a significant impact on corporate development as well as on the worklife experiences of the personnel. Charisma at CCC Most of the literature and commonly held beliefs about charisma in management contexts is centred around a limited number of public figures (Bryman, 1993 Trice & Beyer, 1993). Fame and mass media attention may contribute heavily to the aura of these people and make their cases very special and perhaps of limited relevance for the understanding of less atypical managerial situations. The founders of CCC were not media celebrities. Nevertheless, for the people in the company they scored highly in terms of charisma: They are looked upon as gods. They are never criticized. People look up to them. Christer [one of the founders] radiates enthusiasm. He can turn some damnable setback into something positive. He has exceptional charisma. Everyone wants to talk to him. The employees then developed strong faith and loyalty for the founders and would make efforts beyond what is common in working life. You could go through fire and water for the founders. You felt you were part of it. That making the extra effort was worth it. CCC's founders meet at least two of the characteristics of charismatic leaders: they were deemed to be exceptional by the followers and enjoyed great personal loyalty. A third characteristic, having a mission or vision, is somewhat more ambiguous in this case. For Weber, who developed the idea, the bearer of charisma enjoys loyalty and authority by virtue of a mission believed to be embodied in him (quoted by Bryman, 1993: 292). This is a bit difficult in business life, as the mission (ultimately to make profit) may not quicken the pulse of everyone in a commercial organization. Nevertheless, for some of the people at CCC, the business concept and the way that the founders ran the company had considerable attractiveness. A fourth criterion for charisma, according to some authors (e.g. Trice & Beyer, 1993), is that the leader faces and solves a crisis of some kind. In a cool situation, followers are less inclined to see the leader as so exceptional, to grant him or her so much authority and/or to be so devoted. In the case of CCC, there were, of course, occasional, significant problems, but no major crises for a long initial period. On the contrary, things went well: the company grew quickly and was successful in all respects during the time when the founders were so deeply admired. Charisma is often understood as a personal trait, although certain circumstances may be called for in order to make the followers inclined to see the person as truly exceptional and be strongly devoted and loyal. Crises and anxiety help. When leaders in business must attend to a lot of administrative duties as part of normal management practice or when results are no longer good, the perception of the leader as charismatic may vanish. To understand charisma it is important to consider not only the leader's qualities and his or her behaviour but also the context and the characteristics of the followers. It is perhaps better to see charisma as a quality in the relationship between a person and a group following him or her or even as a perception or attribution of the group. A person seen as charismatic may well have certain qualities self-confidence, rhetorical skills, knowledge, personal courage, an original idea but this in itself does not lead to people responding with deep devotion. Whether leaders such as Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Iacocca, Jim Jones (leader of a religious sect that committed collective suicide) or Hitler are seen as charismatic or not is mainly a matter of social situation, cultural context and the characteristics of the followers. In the case of the founders of CCC we may, in addition to personal qualities and a thoughtthrough and systematically applied leadership style with strong appeal, also point to charisma-facilitating conditions. One important element here is to (choose to) be in a business in an expanding market. Being successful increases the chances of being perceived as charismatic. For a person wanting to be perceived as charismatic this is an alternative to following the more conventional path of facing and solving a difficult situation and thereby appearing to be a saviour for a group (the crisis route). Another important aspect concerns recruitment. It is more difficult to appear charismatic to a diverse audience, with different values and inclinations to interpret and react to talk and other forms of action. CCC's recruitment policy strongly facilitated a good spirit within the organization. Many of the employees were a part of the contact network of the three founders who knew a lot of people and were consequently personally known by the founders from earlier workplaces or in other ways. The average age of the personnel was low. There is a general tendency for new organizations to start by recruiting a homogeneous group of people in order to lay a good foundation for confidence and mutual understanding (Kanter, 1977). In relation to leadership, a homogeneous group of followers makes it much easier to adapt a style and tailor a message so that all respond to it in a similar way. The people recruited may have been inclined to respond to the ideas, practices and personal style of the founders in a highly positive way and perhaps be positively disposed to ascribe charisma-like qualities to the founders. In order to understand charisma the chief criterion being what subordinates see as exceptional qualities in leaders and a willingness to turn themselves into devoted followers then several aspects need to be considered: not just the personal characteristics of the leaders and their leadership style, but also the socio-economic situation and the orientations of the followers. The dynamics being formed in the CCC case were not simply reactions triggered by charismatic leaders, but formed by a more complex interplay between the characteristics of those involved (including young subordinates), a favourable economic context (the rapid growth of the market) and processes involving an effective leadership style and intensive interaction (including attention, feedback and open praise of the personnel, frequent social events outside work, etc.). Post-founder Leadership This history of leadership at CCC provides the background for the common features of the exercise of leadership within the company at the time of my study 10 years after it was founded and 23 years after the founders had withdrawn from the operational management of the company. The patterns initiated by the founders continued to be distinct to the company. Group cohesion, friendship, have fun at the workplace, openness and generosity with information to the employees, etc. were important values. From the view of CCC's management an important task was to create a totality, to get the parts of the company together. What may be referred to as socially integrated leadership is a matter of inducing a common orientation and direction in the operative units (the subsidiaries, project groups and individual consultants) to contribute to the identification with the company and a feeling of loyalty and to achieve social cohesion both at the micro level, within work groups and subsidiaries, and at the overall level, within the company as an entity. Socially integrated leadership does not primarily address technical and operative issues. It is a matter of transferring ideas, meanings and orientations that counteract the disintegrative tendencies inherent in consultancy work. It facilitates a convergence in thinking, feeling and acting, which increases the chances of people staying in the company, getting along and being able to cooperate efficiently within and between units. Socially integrated leadership is partly a matter of boundary-keeping. The key group in CCC was the subsidiary managers who headed units of 3050 people. (When a subsidiary grew and employed more than 50 people, it was divided up into two units.) The company prided itself on its decentralization and very flat organization. In consultancy companies, as in some other service companies, the boundaries between company and customer were often unclear. The projects were carried out on behalf of the client, in cooperation with the client's personnel and often at the client's workplace. This could trigger loyalty conflicts, and identity problems might follow from this. You are out there with the customer and keep your face. But you easily get into problems with loyalty. And if you are to be on the right side of the border you have to go home occasionally and discuss the situation For subsidiary managers it was then important to create and maintain strong social bonds between the company and the consultants: If you are working for a customer all on your own you have a tremendous need to have contact with your manager. To feel that you are not only earning money, but that you also are a person and important as such. The subsidiary manager was important here as a representative of, and symbol for, the company as well as having a personal relation with the consultants. It was, CCC people thought, important that he or she was both respected and well liked. A related important aspect concerned the internal social cohesiveness and atmosphere within the company. The subsidiary managers should be socially active and express a positive and engaged spirit. Expectations in the company were high in this regard. I will now give two brief illustrations to show how leadership in CCC was exercised, and the way it aimed to ensure that the right values and orientations were accomplished. Both illustrations are from the recruitment and selection process, which at CCC (but also more generally) reproduced and reinforced culture through the selection of employees and the messages that the process sents to the newcomers. One example comes from the observations of a manager responding to calls on a recruitment advertisement. Having described the company and the jobs and answered questions, he asked the caller if they were interested in applying to write to the company and say something about themselves and their qualifications, what they wanted and what they were like as a person. He asked them not to send academic grades, etc. He said he was not interested in formal documents. This signalled an informal approach, which in turn indicated trust. It also communicated that it was personal characteristics and orientations, rather than technical skills or the ability to carry out the job in a depersonalized way, that were valued in this company. In another example, also from the recruitment process, a manager asked personal questions like Are you a religious person?, Are you jealous person? and Is it important for you to speak the truth?. He also talked with the potential employee's spouse about the job, what it might mean in terms of travelling, being away from home, etc. before an agreement to employ the interviewee was made. In the second case there was also an emphasis on the informal as well as a broader view of the personnel in the workplace. The manager went far beyond what is traditionally conceived as being part of the work role. This indicated that his and the company's interest in personnel went much further than how to solve computer problems between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Openness and informality as well as the importance of personal life and the link and overlap between work and home life were stressed. The new employee and his/her spouse were also expected to commit themselves to the demands of the company in terms of overtime, travelling, etc.

Questions: 1. Using what you have learned from the textbook, explain how the organizational culture described in the case shapes leadership?

2. Explain how the organizational culture described in the case impacts the POLC functions and all stakeholders in the company.