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This article examines how professional wrestling destabilizes conventional distinctions between ‘authentic’ organizational leadership and its cultural representations by analyzing World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) owner-CEO Vince McMahon’s sustained portrayal of his malign alter ego, ‘Mr McMahon.’ Integrating critical leadership studies, theories of spectacle, and the pro-wrestling concepts of gimmicks and kayfabe, the study undertakes a qualitative textual analysis of televised storylines, industry archives, and secondary historiography. It traces the evolution of managerial caricature from peripheral heel-manager roles to the executive heel turn precipitated by the 1997 Montreal Screwjob, demonstrating how McMahon’s self-satirizing performance simultaneously commodified anti-corporate sentiment and consolidated corporate authority. By foregrounding caricature and carnivalesque spectacle as diagnostic lenses, the article extends debates on leadership performativity, illustrates how managerial identity can be both embodied and merchandised, and highlights the utility of popular culture phenomena for theorizing contemporary managerialism.
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Alf Rehn (2025) studied this question.
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