This paper develops a theory of digital leadership charisma by explaining how charisma is (re)produced in and through meme ecologies. Building on Weber’s theory of charismatic authority and Lee’s concept of digital charisma, we conceptualize meme ecologies as distributed sociomaterial environments in which users, leaders, institutional actors, algorithms, AI-generated content, and platform architectures jointly participate in the production, amplification, contestation, and stabilization of charisma. We identify three complementary mechanisms through which this process unfolds, including simulation leading to mythmaking, intertextual processes, and platform affordances. We conclude by outlining a research agenda for studying charisma in digitally mediated environments.
This article examines how political leaders construct leadership through digital impression management during electoral campaigns and how these strategies are associated with audience engagement. Drawing on leadership theory, we distinguish between universal, or generalised role-based, prototypicality and group prototypicality, and conceptualise negative opponent-focused communication as contrastive leadership construction. We analyse Facebook posts published by incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orb & aacute;n and challenger P & eacute;ter M & aacute;rki-Zay during the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election. Using quantitative content analysis and negative binomial regression models, we assess how different signalling strategies are associated with total reactions and Love reactions, interpreted as indicators of engagement and affective resonance rather than direct impression formation. The findings reveal no uniform pattern of audience response. Positive universal prototypicality was associated with higher engagement in M & aacute;rki-Zay's communication but with lower engagement in Orb & aacute;n's. Group-based signalling was central to both campaigns but showed more limited and uneven associations, with positive group representation linked to stronger affective engagement in Orb & aacute;n's communication. Negative opponent-focused strategies were associated with increased overall engagement, particularly for M & aacute;rki-Zay, but were less effective in eliciting positive affect. The study contributes to leadership theory by conceptualising digital impression management as a relational process in which leadership claims acquire significance through their reception within particular leader-follower contexts.
This paper examines resistance to leadership and how it operates across the hierarchy in a large organization. Based on a case study of an international manufacturing organization that needs to become more sustainable in its core business, this study identifies three dialectics: control/resistance, power/identity, and leader/follower which affected internal stakeholders’ views on the company’s sustainability improvements and, consequently, their resistance to leadership. By exploring the often dynamics at play in this initiative, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the dialectical forces involved when leaders do not attempt sufficiently to implement strategic change, particularly in a contested arena such as sustainability.
Leadership research has increasingly acknowledged the destructive consequences of narcissistic leadership, yet existing work largely conceptualises these effects as behavioural excesses or attitudinal deficits. This paper advances a different argument: that narcissistic leadership operates through a distinctive emotional mechanism that systematically reallocates emotional regulation, affirmation, and identity maintenance from leaders to followers. We introduce Emotional Extraction Leadership (EEL) as a process-based conceptual framework describing leadership contexts in which followers are compelled to absorb, manage, and stabilise leaders' emotional needs under conditions of asymmetric power. Drawing on an integrative theory-building review across leadership, emotion, and identity literatures, we theorise how emotional labour becomes not merely an occupational demand but a form of emotionally structured governance. Over time, such extraction generates identity harm: the erosion of professional self-concept, moral coherence, and agentic voice, extending beyond commonly examined outcomes such as burnout or dissatisfaction. By reframing emotional labour as a site of power rather than coping, this paper contributes a process model linking narcissistic power, emotional regulation displacement, and identity harm. The concept of EEL offers a generative framework for rethinking destructive leadership, foregrounding emotion as a mechanism of control and opening new directions for empirical and ethical inquiry in leadership studies.
