Abstract
<p>The concepts of leaders and leadership have been dealt with by many different disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, with the fields of management and political science being foremost, and have become frequent subject matter of academic discussions and research. The first studies in this field took place at the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, with analysis of important personalities that changed the course of the history and shaped societies’ futures with their extraordinary abilities and characteristics. It was predominantly these characteristics, as well as behavioral and situational approaches, that formed the basis of these first studies. The objective of this study is to determine which of the six presidents of the Republic of Turkey, who have served or are serving as Head of State, has more of the charismatic leadership characteristics, employing an interdisciplinary methodology in which multi-criteria decision-making methods and techniques are used. Within this context, the traits that a leader and a charismatic leader should have were determined, the weights of these traits were calculated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the calculated weights were used in the Fuzzy TOPSIS method, and the presidents were analyzed from the perspective of charismatic leadership. The results obtained support the predictions made before the study was begun. It was determined that Turgut Ozal, who was the 8<sup>th</sup>President of Republic of Turkey, is the most charismatic leader among the selected presidents. </p><p>The concepts of leaders and leadership have been dealt with by many different disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, with the fields of management and political science being foremost, and have become frequent subject matter of academic discussions and research. The first studies in this field took place at the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, with analysis of important personalities that changed the course of the history and shaped societies’ futures with their extraordinary abilities and characteristics. It was predominantly these characteristics, as well as behavioral and situational approaches, that formed the basis of these first studies. The objective of this study is to determine which of the six presidents of the Republic of Turkey, who have served or are serving as Head of State, has more of the charismatic leadership characteristics, employing an interdisciplinary methodology in which multi-criteria decision-making methods and techniques are used. Within this context, the traits that a leader and a charismatic leader should have were determined, the weights of these traits were calculated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the calculated weights were used in the Fuzzy TOPSIS method, and the presidents were analyzed from the perspective of charismatic leadership. The results obtained support the predictions made before the study was begun. It was determined that Turgut Ozal, who was the 8<sup>th</sup> President of Republic of Turkey, is the most charismatic leader among the selected presidents. </p>
Highlights
From the past to the present, the concept of leadership has been of interest to many researchers from different disciplines, and has been a popular subject on which intensive research has been carried out (Lewin, 1944, McGregor, 1952, Bennis, 1959, Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Bass and Stogdill, 1990; Wren, 1995, Antonakis, 2006, Gill, 2011, Yukl, 2010)
The literature is rich with studies of the concept of leadership, which can be defined as gathering a group of people around certain goals, and mobilizing and directing these people in the way of realizing these goals
In approaches analyzing this concept, first, the personal traits of the leader were tackled, emphasis was given to the leader‟s behaviors, while in recent periods these approaches were expanded to include situations in which the leader‟s behaviors, and their followers‟ traits, are elaborated
Summary
From the past to the present, the concept of leadership has been of interest to many researchers from different disciplines, and has been a popular subject on which intensive research has been carried out (Lewin, 1944, McGregor, 1952, Bennis, 1959, Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Bass and Stogdill, 1990; Wren, 1995, Antonakis, 2006, Gill, 2011, Yukl, 2010). Humans are social beings and by their nature they need to communicate with other individuals, to love, to be loved, to be respected and to be a member of a group This interaction between people causes, in time, the formation of groups that have similar characteristics, goals, objectives, ideals, lifestyles, beliefs and values. What is talked about is a coming together of individuals who have similar features, it is an extremely difficult task to lead group members in the direction of attaining the group‟s common goals and objectives rather than their individual goals, to motivate them in this way, to keep them together and to manage them At this juncture, individuals who have a more dominant character than other group members within a certain group, who can steer group members towards a common goal, who can motivate and mobilize group members, and who will be followed by group members, are needed. According to Ulgen and Mirze, a leader is “the person who determines the mission, basic goals and vision of an enterprise and who creates appropriate strategies” (Ulgen and Mirze, 2013)
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