Greta Thunberg and the Generation of Moral Authority: A Systematic Literature Review on the Characteristics of Thunberg’s Leadership

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I liked this paper very much as it is. I as glad to see research into moral authority and the climate crisis. I have some very minor comments plus a question.

Minor comments:

1 A couple of phrases needed expressing better.  For example, lines 49-50, "are being truant from school"; line 108 "decades of attrocity". I am referring here to expression and not meaning. Not a major problem, rare examples. 

2 Lines 249-250: I did not understand the point being made using the reference to Bengtsson. I presumed the labelling of the text being analysed as objective was referring to the existence of the text. The objectivity of the texts would seem to me to be problematic e.g. comparing the The Guardian and Fox News. So, I did not feel I understood the point you were making.

3 Figure 1 - the annotation of the links within the concept of moral authority were messed up in my version of the manuscript - "is associated with".

Question: I think I appreciated why you had connected moral authority and transformational leadership. I understand that some explanations of transformational leadership say transformation leaders persuade followers to out aside their personal interests and motivate them to work for transcendental goals. So I can see the overlap between moral authority and  transformational leadership.

But I was not convinced of the need to link these two concepts together. Did you consider any other leadership concepts/models other than transformational leadership?

One of the things that caught my attention in your manuscript was the suggestion that others had been making the same arguments about the environment for a long time but had not succeeded in getting the attention of so many people or young people. What made her so different from all these others who had been trying to mobilise action to deal with the crisis? Was she more credible in some way?

There is a model of leadership credibility (see for example Kouzes and Posner). This suggests credible leaders are honest, competent and persuasive. Summed up as "believable".

Would credible leadership be a possible alternative to transformational leadership?

I stress again I like the paper very much.

   

 

Author Response

We are grateful to the reviewers and editors for the valuable input in improving our article. We have now made required changes in line with the comments/suggestions received. 

Reviewer 1 comments:

• A couple of phrases needed expressing better.  For example, lines 49-50, "are being truant from school"; line 108 "decades of attrocity". I am referring here to expression and not meaning. Not a major problem, rare examples. 
  • Response: This comment for revision is much appreciated and the changes can be found in at Page 2, Lines 47-48, and Page 3, 102-103.
• Lines 249-250: I did not understand the point being made using the reference to Bengtsson. I presumed the labelling of the text being analysed as objective was referring to the existence of the text. The objectivity of the texts would seem to me to be problematic e.g. comparing the The Guardian and Fox News. So, I did not feel I understood the point you were making.
  • Response: We understand why the reviewer addressed this and agree that these sentences are a bit unclear. We attempted to address the objectivity of the researcher, aiming to compare the prospect for objectivity when conducting a face-to-face interview and already published material. However, when looking at this section after the reviewer comment we decided to take it away, as we believe it was not relevant and important in this paper.
• Figure 1 - the annotation of the links within the concept of moral authority were messed up in my version of the manuscript - "is associated with".
  • Response: It is revised and can be found in Figure 1, Page 2.
• I think I appreciated why you had connected moral authority and transformational leadership. I understand that some explanations of transformational leadership say transformation leaders persuade followers to out aside their personal interests and motivate them to work for transcendental goals. So I can see the overlap between moral authority and transformational leadership.But I was not convinced of the need to link these two concepts together. Did you consider any other leadership concepts/models other than transformational leadership?
  • Response: The aim was not to link these two concepts together. Rather to use them separately as a framework for the study. In figure 1 the attempt was to visualize the process in how we utilized these two theoretical frameworks to conduct the manifest deductive qualitative content analysis and thereafter the latent deductive quality content analysis. We have not looked at other models as we believe transformational leadership served as an important framework in several ways. For example, we believe both TL and MA play important role in the process of becoming a leader and take global actions against climate change. We therefore wanted to explore the characteristics of Thunberg in relation to these two central concepts - TL and MA.
• One of the things that caught my attention in your manuscript was the suggestion that others had been making the same arguments about the environment for a long time but had not succeeded in getting the attention of so many people or young people. What made her so different from all these others who had been trying to mobilise action to deal with the crisis? Was she more credible in some way?
  • Response: We made an attempt to try to answer that on Page, 12-13, Lines 455-550 and Page 14-15, Lines 567-650, where we discuss her young age, race, gender, cultural setting and socioeconomically condition as factors that influenced her to mobilise action to deal with the climate crisis.
• There is a model of leadership credibility (see for example Kouzes and Posner). This suggests credible leaders are honest, competent and persuasive. Summed up as "believable". Would credible leadership be a possible alternative to transformational leadership?
  • Response: We tend to agree with this point and suggestion. However, we have opted to analyse our data using TL for reasons and motivations highlighted in the article. Perhaps in a future paper it would be a good idea.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

The transformational leadership (Bass 1985) that you describe is about company management rather than political leadership. It would be necessary to refer to the concept of transformative leadership in politics (Burns 1978). Consequently, the theoretical framework for leadership is flawed.
Leadership is the property of autonomous people. The real influence of the leadership of the person who is underage is questionable.
The theoretical framework of the article is insufficiently justified in the literature (including moral authotity)
The literature of the article is far from sufficient. For example, you quote a student textbook (item 33) instead of original works on leadership.
Generally, the article is not scientific enough, but is rather a journalism.

Author Response

We are grateful to the reviewers and editors for the valuable input in improving our article. We have now made required changes in line with the comments/suggestions received. 

Reviewer 2 comments:

• The transformational leadership (Bass 1985) that you describe is about company management rather than political leadership. It would be necessary to refer to the concept of transformative leadership in politics (Burns 1978).
  • Response: Although the climate crisis is very well a political issue, we have not chosen to address Thunberg as a political leader. Rather, we have utilized transformational leadership to study the characteristics of Thunberg that influences the environmental concern among people. Similar studies have applies the transformational leadership theory (Bass 1985) for such studies, such as Kura (2016), Hay (2010) and Srour et al. (2020).
• Consequently, the theoretical framework for leadership is flawed.
  Leadership is the property of autonomous people. The real influence of the leadership of the person who is underage is questionable.
  • Response: We have the opinion that a person underage can be a leader and that causes change in individuals and social systems. We also acquire the belief that children can motivate inspire and mobilize people to act for a specific cause, such as for the climate crisis. The findings in our article show that several adults and youth acknowledge Thunberg as a leader.
• The theoretical framework of the article is insufficiently justified in the literature (including moral authority)
  • Response: We have now added a section to the theoretical framework. Refer to Page 2, Lines 80-90 and Page 3, lines 120-124.
• The literature of the article is far from sufficient. For example, you quote a student textbook (item 33) instead of original works on leadership.
  • Response: We have now referred to the original work. Refer to Page 1, Line 39.
• Generally, the article is not scientific enough, but is rather a journalism.
  • Response: We tend disagree with this comment, because in our opinion our work in this article is systematic literature review which is a scientific and academic procedure in undertaking research and this is certainly not journalism.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is really interesting and contains many valuable findings. I am not sure if researchers should be locate Young Actist between leaders like Ghadi or Martin Luther King. 

Author Response

We are grateful to the reviewers and editors for the valuable input in improving our article. We have now made required changes in line with the comments/suggestions received. 

Reviewer 3 comments:

• This paper is really interesting and contains many valuable findings.
• I am not sure if researchers should be locate Young Activist between leaders like Ghandi or Martin Luther King. 
  • Response: We agree the complexity of comparing Thunberg with leaders like Ghandi or Martin Luther King. This was not our attention in that sense. Ghandi was mentioned on Page 3, Lines 91-115, with the purpose to provide a context of our perception of a Moral authority. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela was mentioned on Page 6, Lines 261-767 with the intention to show the importance that moral authorities sacrifice in some regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The theoretical basis of genuine leadership (Bass 1982) for the analysis of political leadership is still incorrect. As I wrote earlier, one should rely on other theories (eg Burns 1978).
A comparison of the autonomous and subjective activities of leaders such as N. Mandela or M.L. King to the teenager G. Thunberg (for whom her parents are legally responsible), is scientifically unacceptable. The added content, eg the comparison of M. Gandhi's personal dedication to that of G. Thunberg, strengthens this incorrect approach.
The added parts of the article do not contribute much to its quality.

Author Response

We are grateful to the reviewer for the valuable input in improving our article. We have now made required changes in line with the comments/suggestions received. 

Reviewer 2 comments:

 

• The theoretical basis of genuine leadership (Bass 1982) for the analysis of political leadership is still incorrect. As I wrote earlier, one should rely on other theories (eg Burns 1978).
  • Response: This comment for revision is much appreciated we understand the fit of the proposed theory. However, our research has been deductively framed and conducted using the Transformational Leadership Theory (Bassm 1982). It is not feasible at this stage to analyze the whole data with the suggested theory.
• A comparison of the autonomous and subjective activities of leaders such as N. Mandela or M.L. King to the teenager G. Thunberg (for whom her parents are legally responsible), is scientifically unacceptable. The added content, eg the comparison of M. Gandhi's personal dedication to that of G. Thunberg, strengthens this incorrect approach.
  • Response: We understand why the reviewer addressed this and can see that these comparisons might be seen challenging. We have come to the conclusion that the. When looking at these section after the reviewer comment we decided to take it away, as we believe it was not significant in this paper. The revisions can be found on page 3, lines 93-98; page 6, lines 228-230.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

The article still contains significant errors and shortcomings.
The theoretical framework of moral authority is not based on literature. Why does a moral authority have the following qualities such as dedication, trust, courage, hope, belonging? This cannot be deduced from the general bibliography you are referring to (verses 90-95). How does this relate to transformational leadership? The fragments added in the last version of the article introduce chaos (pp. 6-12).
Despite two rounds of revision, the bibliography contains errors or refers to things that are not included in the quoted articles, e.g. item 2 is not a publication on the Paris Agreement (lines 28-32), publication 29 is cited as 41 or as 42 (lines 76-32). 78) the article is incorrectly described (item 32 in the bibliography). These are just a few examples. Publication No. 8, ie Daston, Vidal, The Moral Authority of Nature (2013), is a monograph consisting of 18 chapters written by various authors. What article are you referring to?
The article is not scientific enough. The weakness of the article is also that you can find a basic master's thesis with the same research model on the Internet. The newspaper is still carelessly editorial.

Author Response

Reviewer 2 mentions that this article can be found as a Master´s thesis on the internet. We have clearly stated in the article that this paper is based on a master thesis, page 15, lines 640-641. Since this journal offers public access, we aimed to reach a greater audience, especially as it has been a call for sustainability and leadership. Further, reviewer 2 questions the utilization of the theoretical frameworks in this article. The purpose of this study was to expand the use of Transformational leadership and Moral Authority and provide a link between these theories within sustainable leadership discourses. We acknowledge that we missed to specify our reference Publication No. 8, ie Daston, Vidal, The Moral Authority of Nature (2013). We were referring to the introduction in the book, which is written by Daston and Vidal.  We acknowledge the mistakes in the bibliography, item 2 is not a publication on the Paris Agreement (lines 28-32), publication 29 is cited as 41 or as 42 (lines 76-32). These mistakes are now sorted out and we have thoroughly gone through our references now and corrected a few more minor errors. Reviewer 2 questions the qualities of a moral authority that are presented at page3, lines 90-95. The bibliography referred to in this section, when discussing leaders with moral authority, identifies and discusses qualities, such as sacrifice, hope, trust, courage and belonging as essential characteristics. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf