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Abstract(s)
There are several emerging theoretical positions on leadership, with many definitions emerging that emphasize different characteristics of the leader. Therefore, the leader and his/her success depend on the perspective of analysis. The literature admits a wide set of variables of the leader (personal characteristics, attitudes, and needs), its employees, organization in which it is developed and the context in which it occurs. Here, we intent to retrospectively analyse a leader, that lived between 1863 and 1945, who was recognized as a successful entrepreneur and engineer in a major automobile brand. The purpose of this essay is to characterize Henry Ford's leadership through the content analysis of his autobiography My life and Work. After identifying the fundamental characteristics underlying the types of transactional and transformational leadership and using a dichotomous criterion of their presence or absence, we proceed to read the book. The results indicate that Henry Ford was a man with a high ethical sense, to some extent a visionary, concerned about the maximum possible profitability extracted from the least man's effort. His style of leadership seems to fulfil an appreciable set of transformational leadership characteristics, although some traits of transactional leadership are also evident. We conclude that Ford is surely a charismatic leader, a sine qua non but not sufficient condition to be considered a complete transformational leader.
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Keywords
Henry Ford new leadership movement charisma
Citation
Publisher
European Publisher