Beyond the Spark: How Crisis and Social Context Shape Charisma Signaling

Crises are widely believed to foster charismatic leadership (Shamir et al., 1994; Shamir & Howell, 1999; Weber, 1922), yet it remains unclear under what conditions charisma emerges and resonates. In times of widespread uncertainty and anxiety, individuals naturally turn to strong leaders who can replace fear with hope, establish direction amid chaos, and mobilize collective action to overcome inaction (Shamir & Howell, 1999). Charismatic leadership is conceptualized as a “values-based, symbolic, and emotion-laden leader signaling” (Antonakis et al., 2016, p. 304), where signals are defined as “things one does that are visible and that are in part designed to communicate” (Spence, 2002, p. 434). As such, charisma signaling serves as a critical resource during turbulent times, a phenomenon this dissertation seeks to fully explore. Therefore, this dissertation addresses how charismatic leadership functions in an increasingly turbulent environment and what factors shape how charisma is communicated and received. The dissertation comprises four distinct chapters that explore this phenomenon using a multi-methodological approach. This approach combines theoretical and empirical studies to gain a holistic view of how charisma unfolds in a crisis. The first chapter offers a theory-based framework for purpose, a foundation of charismatic leadership, providing orientation, clarity, and evidence for a construct that has often been vaguely defined. The second chapter presents and validates a fine-tuned Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) model for the automated detection of charismatic leadership tactics (CLTs) in speech, providing proof of concept for a more scalable approach to leadership communication analysis. The third chapter investigates how different types of crises (Coombs, 2004), intentional versus unintentional, affect leaders’ charisma signaling and moral framing. Finally, the fourth chapter explores the risk of a value-based backlash in response to charismatic crisis communication in a comparative case study of German chancellors Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz. The collective findings of these studies show that charisma is neither universally expressed nor uniformly perceived but rather a dynamic signal that is profoundly shaped by context. By demonstrating that not all crises afford the same opportunities for charisma signaling, these studies provide a theoretical refinement to the widely held assumption that crises uniformly enhance charismatic leadership. Specifically, the studies reveal that crisis intentionality (i.e., whether the crisis was caused by a deliberate action by an agent) played a critical role in shaping a leader’s charisma signaling. This finding aligns with the notion that intentional crises uniquely foster a strong “us versus them” effect among followers (Bligh et al., 2004; Collins et al., 2022; Davis & Gardner, 2012), thereby enabling stronger charismatic and moral appeals from leaders. In contrast, unintentional crises do not lead to the same pronounced increase in charisma signaling at the composite level, that is, when summing all charismatic leadership tactics to reflect the overall intensity of charisma signaling. This distinction between intentionality helps explain the mixed findings in the literature regarding the impact of unintentional crises on charisma signaling. All studies found no significant differences in charisma signaling behavior between male and female leaders during crises, thus challenging persistent stereotypes and supporting the gender similarity hypothesis. Finally, the case study of Chancellors Merkel and Scholz illustrates how a charismatic signal can lead to public backlash and a negative charismatic effect when followers perceive it as misaligned with their values. Overall, this dissertation offers a differentiated, context-sensitive, and empirically grounded understanding of charismatic leadership in crises. It advances both leadership theory and crisis communication by clarifying how leaders mobilize meaning, emotion, and moral framing to inspire others. The findings demonstrate that charismatic leadership is a dynamic signaling process that unfolds at the intersection of a leader’s rhetorical strategy, the collective identity of followers, and the specific characteristics of the crisis. This research provides actionable guidance for leaders to navigate uncertainty and polarization by strategically using language, values, and emotions to foster trust and mobilize action, ultimately contributing to the development of more resilient, ethical, and purpose-driven leadership.