transformational leadership final

8/3/2019 Transformational Leadership Final

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Transformational Leadership

Introduction

Once rigid and authoritative style of, leadership has been transformed into changeover since the

decline in the performance of work class. The changeover has brought different visions for the

leadership as transformational, interest-based, and utopianism and researchers has devoted a

comprehensive time to all these thoughts. There are theoretical and objective data has collected

in a form of library which elaborates the effectiveness of transformational leadership

methodology. The practical results of the transformational leadership are no doubt out numbers.

We have data that shows the activeness of workers, their output, and higher satisfaction level of

workers from salary point of view, and increased companys repute, higher graph of profit and

the positive impacts of leadership during the changeover. However, the historical evidences are

extinct from the literature on the analysis of adopted values and the support for moral obligation

regarding transformational leadership. There is also not much work available on the trail-and-

error method that shows the polarity of Leadership to the Corporate Social Responsibility that

portray the leadership with highly esteemed values and moralities. The lack of research and

studies in the area of leadership has highlighted only the worst side of business leadership made

by well known managers in the business worlds history.

Perceiving the lack of information on the empirical study, the leadership researchers call into

question various leadership characteristics majorly focus on the modified behavior that inspires

the followers to be ethically and morally strong and efficient in the company. Researches has

been commenced to introduce the transformational leadership as the best approach adopted by

the leaders that produces competitive workforce and the quality output that may help the

followers to become efficient leaders in the future. Contrary to transactional leadership,


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transformational leadership gives free hands to the workers by increasing the motivation level,

raising morale, and output and all this is done by adopting planned strategies. People developed

wrong concept about transformational leadership and considered it impractical and imaginative

role that is not possible to adopt in real environment. However, this methodology proved that

transformational leadership is the best method that may cause the followers to work in harmony

by mutual understanding and exhibiting the virtues to get the maximum output. This is the

agreed behavior between leaders and followers that can take the company to the heights of

success. Working in a team environment, they seek the common objective and utilize the

capabilities to achieve the target. Focus on the group behavior, the participants conceive and

engage the advanced qualities of ones personality. In the past, transformational leadership was

taken for granted as a leader who guides the followers and reaches the target avoiding all moral

obligations and team work for the improved Individualistic behavior. In reality, the concept of

transformational leadership is associated with motivation, ethical behavior, and efficiency of

followers by employing various strategies. There are followers personality, sincerity with the

company and the collective impact of the company, also leader as an ideal, motivating the

followers to give best output, and pluses and minuses of the followers as this will help the leader

to bring the followers on track that increase their efficiency level. The concept of

Transformational leader was first introduced by James MacGregor Burns in the political context.

Later, this term was borrowed by organizational psychology to interpret the leadership behavior

and the corporate social responsibility. Burns defines the transformational leadership as the

mutual contract between the manager and the workforce to assist one another to achieve success

by achieving high quality morals and ethical values. In his actual theory, burns demonstrated two

theories; one is the transformational leadership and the corporate social responsibility and second


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is the transactional leadership and interest based relation. The focus of this study is to explore the

methodology of transformational leadership and what will be the best method adopted by the

researchers and scholars in the future.

Literature Review

Literature review of the transformational leadership is based on the research of Burns that

differentiates between transformational and transactional leadership. According to burns,

transactional leader adopt authoritative style and compel the followers to work according to the

guideline and the instructions provided by them. They try to reduce the negative factors that can

affect the performance level by communicating frequently with the followers. Transformational

leaders, on the other hand, adopt proper strategy according to which manager and followers plan

and outline and agreed the task in the limited time. In this type of leadership, focus remains the

team instead of individual and vision remains the collective. The transformational leadership is

based on the newest approach that is trial-and-error theory. It focuses on the qualities of the

leader as best characteristics, virtuous behavior, high level of motivation, mental progress, and

self respect.

- The ideal leaders with the best characteristics and model behavior are successful inwinning the appreciation of followers.

- Next is the high motivation that is used to indirectly push the candidates for the workwhile briefing them about the challenging environment and appreciate them on their

progress.

- Mental progress is seen in the behavior of leader that appreciate the workers to showsome extra-ordinary work by examining the possibilities, and evaluate the problem in

modern scenario.


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- There remain individualized behavior that focuses on the individual workers require thesuccess and development, and exploring new dimensions.

The Transactional leadership, on the other hand, is the rank associated. It places the leader at

higher level and workers at secondary level, where workers have to follow the leaders

anyway. It incorporates three factors to compel the workers for work. They are possible

reward, active administration, and passive administration. The possible reward is set before

project for the workers that the work will be taken by them and at the time of completion.

Here Burns concluded that the changeover leadership approach transform the lives of

workers and the company. This is not similar to the interest based method rather it focuses on

the integrity and its relationship with transformational leadership. There are evidences

present in the literature that discuss the integrity as well as transformational leadership. The

researchers argue that transformational leader always possesses integrity and allow the team

workers to communicate openly and honestly. The scholars also point out this thing that

leaders with the characteristic of integrity give importance to the self / personal identity and

the response obtain from the workers. Experiments show that the trust has relationship with

the transformational leadership. Fair decision-making is an important characteristic of

transformational leadership. Carlson interrelate the integrity and justice in the leader and

expand his thought and said ethical behavior is the important ingredient of the

transformational leadership. Many other researchers contribute their results and observations

towards the leadership literature and offer a code that bears diverse characteristics and

possess the moral values serving the leadership to perform better in the critical environment.

(Bass & Steidlmeier 1999). On the other hand, transactional leadership follow the

Utilitarianism that need act from the followers and see the leader who rules over the


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followers. Act demonstrates the ideal behavior of follower during the project and rule

characterized that acts of the followers will be critically examined by the leader and judges

the level of performance on the work output. Research shows that managers make their last

report regarding followers performance and job responsibility on the utilitarian theory.

(Fritzsche et al., 1995) and it is obvious that utilitarian is opposite to what is known as ethical

values. The concept of group working and the mutual benefit to make the followers do the

job, transactional leaders sole intention is to complete the work by offering them a little

authority in there personals, prize, and extra facilities attached with their position in the

company. The only purpose of the transactional leader is to get maximum appreciation,

promotion, and worldly benefit by forcing the workers to achieve the set target in time. Bass

& Steidlmeier (1999) demonstrate that the theory of transactional leader is based around the

individual interest, benefit of the leader as well as workers. Both work for their own benefits

instead of one collective motive. The transactional leader follows the utilitarianism, while

transformational leader exhibits ethical and moral values and both are juxtaposed to one

another. It clearly demonstrates the role of transformational leader as follows;

- Leader tries to modify the followers behavior stressing upon the ethical and moralstandards of the society.

- Leader considers the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as the central idea whileacting with the workers on a project leaving all the thoughts about personal profit.

- Transformational leader is the adherent of ethical and moral standards and considers themas the most important characteristic in the leader to show ideal behavior which shows the

sense of responsibility and moral obligation.


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The whole discussion about transformational leadership is encompassed around the possession of

ethical values and the integrity of action however, somewhere it misleads the leader. As per Bass

theory of transformational leadership we find ideal leaders as Mother Teresa and Jinnah whereas

there are examples like Saddam Hussain that shattered the concept of transformational leaders.

However, Bass and Steidlmeier (1999) authenticate this thing that the ethical values and integrity

are the important components of transformational leader and the leaders lacking the integrity and

possessing the underlying benefits that may obtained from the leadership is known as Psudo-

transformational leadership.

The dilemma of the era is that we have no data regarding transformational leadership and the

connection with the integrity. We are short in such library that may guide us to the right direction

as integrity is the basic ingredient of transformational leadership. It is also a thought provoking

tat lack of such research and data from the history of transformational leadership, people are

going astray and has started thinking that integrity is not at all the part of transformational

leaders behavior. This has stopped the conceptual development of the leadership and promotes

the leader without having integrity. There is the need to commence a research on the following

hypothesis that there is directly relationship transformational leadership, morality, and integrity.

Here, we meet with the genuine purpose of our study that is based on the empirical research on

the integrity and the transformational leaders.

Our hypothesis is based on two points;

1. The level of integrity finds in the leaders / managers.2. Integrity is directly proportional to the transformational leadership.


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Craig & Gustafson (1998) presented the scale of perceived Integrity leadership scale that is used

to define different levels of integrity that is found in the transformational leaders. Using this

scale, it is somehow possible that various levels of integrity could be obtained that will be

helpful in measuring the integrity level of a leader in an organization and it will help the

researchers and analysts to define the integrity of leaders in future working in different

organizations. Evidences show that rating obtained from the leaders working at higher level is

authentic as compared to the rating provided by leaders at subordinate level. Morgan proposed

that high authorities rating is of more value because;

a. Higher bodies have dimensional view to observe the leader under observation.b. Superiors have a proper lay out to measure the daily behavioral responses of the leader.c. Raters having different perspective will go for different levels of integrity in the

manager.

d. Perspective may obscure the vision that may affect the understanding of the leadersbehavior.

The leader, that is being observed, may exhibits different behavioral responses at different level.

His attitude towards superiors and authorities will be different as compared to the behavior that

he shows among his subordinates. That will guide us to obtain a measurement that shows the

higher level of integrity and then goes down to the lower level of integrity. The basic purpose of

this research is to measure the levels of integrity in the transformational leadership and how it

can be set as criteria that is suitable for the organization.

Take it as a progressing instrument, Western societies has long before adopted this concept of

transformational leadership, even at government level. This may be found in the Finnish Defence


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Force where the concept of Deep Lead Model has adopted to train the leaders bears the

transformational characteristics.

transformational leadership final

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