The Assessment of Charismatic Leadership

Abstract

This paper examines the psychometric properties of a German version of the Conger-Kanungo Scale (CKS) of charismatic leadership, and compares charismatic leadership with the two leadership paradigms that have dominated theory and practice to date: the transformational/transactional paradigm and the consideration/initiating structure paradigm. An empirical study (N = 404) was conducted to explore aspects of reliability and validity of the CKS. In terms of construct validity, it was demonstrated that the translated instrument had adequate factorial validity. In addition, charismatic leadership measured in terms of the CKS showed convergent validity with respect to both transformational and transactional leadership and initiating structure, and divergent validity with respect to laissez-faire and consideration. In sum, the results contribute to leadership theory (e.g., comparing and contrasting several leadership theories) and practice.