Ronald McDonald is not just a clown who hawks hamburgers and chips. According to two scholars writing in the journal Leadership Quarterly, Ronald McDonald is also a transformational corporate leader.
David M Boje, who holds the Bank of America Endowed Professorship of Management at New Mexico State University, and Carl Rhodes, associate professor in the School of Management at the University of Technology Sydney, in Australia, produced a study called The Leadership of Ronald McDonald: Double Narration and Stylistic of Transformation.
Boje and Rhodes put their case forthrightly. “The argument,” they say, “is that rather than just being a spokesperson or marketing device for the McDonald’s corporation, Ronald performs an important transformational leadership function….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.