Does the freelance environment of broadcast television production in the UK encourage charistmatic leadership?

Higgs, M. and Hobbs, M. (2004) Does the freelance environment of broadcast television production in the UK encourage charistmatic leadership? (Henley Working Paper Series), Reading. University of Reading

Record type: Book

Abstract

Change has been a defining characteristic of many areas of the television industry in recent years. Regulation, technological advances, and structural reorganisation, together with increased competition have resulted in new ways of working for the UK’s production personnel. Although there has been some interest into the effects these changes have on employees, there has been little or no research into the effect on leadership that this new environment is producing.
Broadcast television in the UK has a workforce of around 47,700 contributing some £12 billion to the UK economy. Like most film and television industries in western economies, the UK is dependent upon access to a pool of freelance talent. In the UK 47.6% (22,700) of broadcast television employees are considered freelance.
Recent leadership research has cast doubt on the value of charismatic leadership, but how true is this in an industry which profits from creative charisma? This paper examines the style of leadership found in the UK television industry. It builds towards a central argument that the freelance environment of UK television production experiences high levels of charismatic leadership.
Charisma, a Greek word meaning “gift of grace”, was introduced into the modern lexicon by Max Weber in The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation (1947). Since the early 1990’s, there have been a number of attempts to integrate leadership research into an overarching theory. The result of this integration has seen Weberian based charismatic theories summarised in the Neo-charismatic Leadership Paradigm (NLP).
One approach to operationalising the concept of leadership charisma is that proposed by Conger and Kanugo (1987). This paper focuses on a quantitative analysis using the Conger-Kanungo Charismatic Leadership Scale and involved administering a questionnaire containing the 25 item Conger-Kanungo scale to a sample of 100 freelance employees.
The Conger & Kanungo model conceptualises charismatic leadership around three distinct stages of activity. Findings of the research are that in Stage 1 (Environmental Assessment), over half respondents (63%) found leadership to be positively charismatic. Stage 2 (Direction Formulation and Communication) found 62% of respondents experiencing leadership which qualified as charismatic. The findings for Stage 3 (Membership Alignment and Implementation) are less pronounced, but still favoured a positive result (54%). The paper concludes that the freelance environment of UK television production experiences high levels of charismatic leadership.
However, the individualistic bias in Weber’s writing does not adequately analyse the role of the followers themselves or the ethics of the leaders they follow. Further, it is based upon the principle of a long term relationship between one leader and his/her followers and in the freelance environment of broadcast television, followers’ allegiance changes with each short-term contract. Moreover, these figures may be misleading as they fail to take into account the unusual response pattern. Most responses created dual peaks in histograms which suggest that those who are perceived to be characteristically charismatic are off-set by those to whom it was perceived as being uncharacteristic. Consequently for a more conclusive profile of the freelance sector in television production the paper recommends gathering further information on the leader-follower relationship.

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