Personality and Leadership by Hogan and Kaiser Report (Assessment)

Do the core concepts of postmodernism help us better understand the strengths and weaknesses of Hogan & Kaiser’s views on personality and leadership?

The core assumptions of postmodernism are curved around the thesis that the human agent cannot be privileged as an all-knowing system at the center of everything. Postmodernism questions the basic assumptions and truths as represented in discourses of realism, and modernism. These assumptions produce varying conceptual results when used as a lens to probe into the views of personality as advanced by Hogan and Kaiser (2005).

The substance of leadership according to the two scholars is heavily reliant on the personality of the leader and how well the leader can use this personality in group control. The ability and the disability of leaders to control groups is the threshold that shows his success and failure respectively. This, according to Hogan and Kaiser (2005), means that the leader must utilize and manipulate his personality with regard to his intention and goals in managing his group.

Personality according to this assumption has been divided into the dark and bright sides. This opinion takes note of the fact that it might not be entirely possible for a leader, as a human being, to be essentially good. Therefore what he brings out as his leadership qualities might be calculated behavioral traits that are aimed towards adjusting him to his role as a leader. This means that the leadership role would fall into jeopardy in the event that the leader’s natural weaknesses become manifest to the workers.

The assumptions of postmodernism set themselves into this jeopardy at the stage where personality takes the form of pretense. This jeopardy is rooted in the realization that man can exist in multiple personalities. The dual character of the man is not as fixed as might be assumed through the discourses of realism. The idea of a leader as constructed by Hogan and Kaiser (2005) can be viewed from the angle of being a critique of the infallible administrator exuding from his core certain essential attributes that are naturally endowed in his being. One key tenet of post-modernism is that it questions the possibility of the existence of bipolar opposites of character. The distance between the extremes of the dark and bright side of the leader can be mediated by a number of possibilities of mixed character.

According to Hogan and Kaiser (2005), leaders excel through group control. This argument is a fundamental weakness of their opinion on leadership in the sense in which it assumes the existence of a homogenous entity of the working force that will automatically follow into the positive influence of the exemplary leader. The weakness can also be understood in the sense in which the argument assumes that the homogenous workforce will automatically agree on all opinions and be conditioned by the unilateral decisions of the leader. According to the assumptions of post-modernism, there can never exist homogenous entities that might be conditioned from one privileged source. Within the workforce as these assumptions might imply exist smaller groups of diverse opinions and can only be united through an elaborate system of differences.

The opinions presented by Kaiser and Hogan (2005) on leadership can therefore be separated into strengths and weaknesses when viewed through the lens of postmodernism. The aspects of these views which are anchored on the differences in leadership style can be defended by the assumptions of postmodernism that emphasize the existence of possibilities. The other aspect that imagines predictability of situations and the existence of definite vertical hierarchies within the leadership structure is disabled by the parts of the postmodern theory which celebrates diversity and lateral associations.

How would postmodernists respond to a practical attack on their views?

Johnson and Dubeley (2000) argue that some fundamental assumptions held by postmodernists can not pass the test of credibility even if observed against their own systems of thought. Their attack on the notion that reality forces itself on man is defeatist according to this attack. The act of stepping out of a glass without opening to see if it would not hurt is a realist critique of postmodernism and one that celebrates the centrality of sense experience and human perception as the key attributes to all understanding. Knowledge according to this attack can only be found through systematic inquiry done through the rational transaction of systems of truth that present themselves to man. Johnson and Dubeley’s (2000) bold attack on pragmatists is therefore an attempt to reclaim the position of the man to the privilege of all activity in the universe.

Pragmatisms might choose to respond to this attack by emphasizing the impossibility of entirely knowing the things we do not have first-hand inbuilt knowledge of the ‘Other.’ Pragmatists might therefore insist that the said reality is basically an aggregate result of how the distinct forms of truth express their forms without necessarily relating or depending on external systems. In their defense, they might add that the act of stepping out of the glass to test their very assumptions would be contrary to their very tenets which deny the human agent the privilege of either creating or assessing reality.

The postmodernist opinion that reality forces itself onto the human agent is sourced out of the notion of independence of reality. The creation of objective truth independent of the rationalization of man is an aspect of truth that postmodernists have sought to defend in the component parts of their theory, (Bernstein, 1983). If they choose this as a defense then they might choose to transfer the argument from the realm of immediate sense experience as exemplified in the act of stepping out of glass and seeking the support of metaphysics. One way in which they would achieve this is to seek explanations from their realist attackers in verifiable explanations of the supernatural and the paranormal experiences. Dreams, psychic activities, and other unusual experiences are part of the systems of reality that defies appropriate explanations of man. These activities might be enlisted in the defense argument as a symbolic way of going through a closed window unhurt.

The postmodernists might still reiterate their old arguments to fend off the realist’s attack. They might respond by illustrating the helplessness of man to intervene in independent phenomena. The mishaps of reason and some proven weaknesses in scientific bodies of knowledge further prove that it is not possible for a man to entirely intervene, or else control the world around him (Delanty, & Strydom, 2003). This position reiterates their all-time opinion that reality forces itself on man. The meaning of this argument can be reinforced by the postmodernist thought that there exists somewhere beyond the reach of man varieties of independent forces which condition the many aspects of reality that present themselves before man. This means that any assumptions, opinions, or conclusions that man might choose to place on this system are at best subjective because he is part of these activities.

References

Bernstein, R. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science, hermeneutics, and praxis. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Delanty, G., & Strydom, P. (Eds.). (2003). Philosophies of social science: The classic and contemporary readings. Philadelphia, PA: McGraw-Hill.

Hogan, R, & Kaiser, R, B. (2005) ‘What we Know about leadership,’ Review of General Psychology 9 (2), pp. 169-180, PsyArticles, 2010.

Johnson, P., & Duberley, J. (2000). Understanding management research: An introduction to epistemology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.