Article 3b: The Sources Of Leader Violence: A comparison of ideological and non-ideological leaders (Mumford et al., 2007) Flashcards
Design of the study
This study analysed 80 historically notable leaders (violent and non-violent) and looked at factors that might predispose leaders to violence (individual, organisational and environmental factors).
Different types of leaders
Prominent leaders, of any type, emerge in response to a crisis:
- Ideological leaders: respond trough crisis by creating a vision of the future that is based on shared social values.
- Charismatic leaders: attempt to resolve the crisis through thier personal traits, motives and characeteristics (power motives, narcissism, authoritarianism).
- Pragmatic leaders: respons to crisis with a sense-making strategy based on analysis and manipulation of the current problem. Focus on pratical and critical evaluation.
Ideological leaders differ from charismatic leaders in terms of:
- Just-world commitment: the world operates through a set of shared norms and values, and moral order. Focus on adressing crisis trough principles that reinforce fairness, justice etc.
- Ideological extremism
- Oppositional bonding: bonding through a shared enemy.
- Impositions of interpretive structures: Ideological leaders provide a specific framework for understanding the world. They provide their followers with a way to interpret events and situations through the lens of their ideology, often discouraging alternative viewpoints.
- Value-based control: keeping influence through deeply held values and moral obligation.
- Social disruption: initiate changes that disrupt the current social structures.
Key factors that predicted violence in ideological leaders
- Just-world commitments: predicted institutional violence.
- Value-based control: predicted cultural violence.
- Imposition of interpretive structures: ideological leadership reshapes societal norms and values through sense-breaking (breaking old values) and sense-making (making new values), leading to cultural violence.
Ideological leadership is particularly prone to violence when combined with:
- Selective information processing: no room for other opinions.
- Group insularity: isolation from other thinkers.
- Institutional sanctioning: when institutions sanction behaviour, they allow some behaviours and discourage others.
- Corruption: abuse of power, unethical behaviour.
Main results
It was found that attributes of ideological leadership influenced the amount of violence, and the occurrence of institutional and cultural violence.