『모비딕』에 나타난 에이허브의 ‘카리스마적’ 리더십은 진정 카리스마적인가?

Abstract

This essay attempts to find an answer to the question, “What factor(s) lead(s) the sailors of the Pequod to follow their captain when he wants to pursue and kill Moby Dick, the most destructive sperm whale, even to the total destruction of their ship and the crew themselves?” Based on the discussions among the scholars who assert that Ahab is a charismatic leader, it presents a hypothesis that it is Ahab’s charismatic leadership that converts the sailors into his loyal followers, and keeps them as such to the end of the story. In order to test the hypothesis, it uses a theory by Boas Shamir, Robert J. House, and Michael B. Arthur, one of the most prominent and established theories of Charismatic Leadership. This paper focuses particularly on the five processes of the theory, which present the specific ways a charismatic leader leads followers to identify themselves with the leader and the goal(s) presented by the leader. Using the first two of the five processes, “Increasing the intrinsic valence of effort” and “Increasing effort-accomplishment expectancies,” it tests the hypothesis in order to check whether Ahab’s leadership can be classified as charismatic. The first process is applied in far greater detail than the second one because, as the “first” part, it plays a key role in the development of the rest of the processes. The result is that in both processes Ahab shows few clues to judge him as a charismatic leader. This means that it may not be charisma that leads the sailors to follow their leader even to death, and instead that we need to find other factors more persuasive than charisma.