eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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This thesis is about charismatic leadership, focusing on charismatic communication style in Finnish knowledge-intensive organizations. The topic is relevant due to increasing demand for information work in the society. Moreover, such work requires cooperation and intellectual engagement from the workforce, which require proper communication, motivation and leadership.

The theoretical framework consists of prominent theories and findings about charismatic leadership and charismatic communication style. The idea is to first paint the broader picture with basic concepts about charismatic leadership and then zoom into charismatic communication style. The literature review is made from a critical perspective.

The aim of the study was to find out how information workers perceive charismatic communication style, using concrete examples from their own work. There were ten semi-structured interviews conducted in total. The interviewees were picked in a fashion that emphasized heterogeneity and rich data. Thematic analysis was used to identify patterns and crucial points of the interviews, and make sense of the data.

Based on the interviewees' perceptions, their charismatic leaders communicated in a way that conveyed authority, approachability, character, aspiration, integrity and intelligence. Findings also suggest that the proper balancing of these six features (especially authority and approachability) and using situational eye is important to charismatic communication style, as well as conveying emotion. However, these are not universal conclusions about the topic, but rather an effort to understand charisma better in business context.