More passion than the job requires? Monstrously transgressive leadership in the promotion of health at work

Abstract

Despite Weber’s early emphasis on passionate emotions in charismatic leadership, and a recent but broader interest in the embodied and emotional aspects of leadership, we still know relatively little about how passions are embodied in leadership. We also know little about how such passions may transgress formally and socially defined limits of leadership in organizations. Through a case of workplace health promotion this paper therefore investigates how people in organizational leadership roles passionately – and corporeally – transgress the limits of these roles whilst pursuing organizational change. Going beyond extant research, the paper argues that the leaders’ pursuit of health was driven by their own embodied passions as well as by organizational rationales, but that their passions were expressed in largely non-charismatic ways that de-motivated rather than motivated employees.