A leader is transactional when the follower is rewarded with a carrot for meeting agreements and standards or beaten with a stick for failing in what was supposed to be done. If the leader is limited to such behavior, the follower will feel like a jackass (Levinson, 1980b). Leaders must also address the follower’s sense of self-worth, one of the things that transformational leaders do. Transformational leaders motivate their followers to do more than the followers originally intended and thought possible. The leader sets challenging expectations and achieves higher standards of performance. Transformational leadership looks to higher purposes. Transformational leaders are expected to cope better with adversity (Parry, 2005). Parameshwar (2003) noted that 10 global leaders of social change developed transcendental higher purposes and went beyond the ordinary by: (1) exposing unresolved, disturbing human rights problems; (2) untangling false interpretations of the world; (3) breaking out of conventional solutions; and (4) making use of transcendental metaphors. Many leaders of world religions, such as Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha, were transforming. They created visions, shaped values, and empowered change (Leighton Ford, 1981). Both transactional and transformational leadership were demonstrated by the Greek leaders of the Anabasis (Xenophon, c. 400 b.c.e.) marching the mercenary Greek army safely through 1,000 miles of hostile Persian territory (Humphries, 2002).
Transactional leadership emphasizes the exchange that occurs between a leader and followers. This exchange involves direction from the leader or mutual discussion with the followers about requirements to reach desired objectives. Reaching objectives will appear psychologically or materially rewarding. If not overlooked or forgiven, failure will bring disappointment, excuses, dissatisfaction, and psychological or material punishment. If the transaction occurs and needs of leader and follower are met, and if the leader has the formal or informal power to do so, he or she reinforces the successful performance.
Up to the late 1970s, leadership theory and empirical work were concentrated almost exclusively on the equivalent of transactional leadership. The exceptions were political, sociological, and psychoanalytical discussions of charisma. Today both transformational and transactional leadership have a wide range of applications, ranging from teaching and nursing to police work and personal selling (Jolson, Dubinsky, & Yammarino et al. 1993).
Freud (1922) recognized that leadership was more than a transactional exchange. The leader embodied ideals with which the follower could identify. Bernard (1938) noted in his examination of corporate executives that tangible inducements were less powerful than personal loyalties. Hook’s (1943) heroes in history made events as well as waiting for them to happen. Political leaders could be reactionary, conservative, reforming, radical, or revolutionary agents of change (Dvir, 1998).
Transformational leadership was first mentioned, as such, by Downton (1973) as different from transactional leadership. Soon after, House (1977) presented a theory of charismatic leadership with testable hypotheses. But with perspectives from Maslow’s needs hierarchy and from writing biographical studies of Presidents Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, in a book entitled Leadership, James MacGregor Burns (1978) opened wide the impetus for research to contrast transformational leadership to transactional leadership as its opposite. This was followed by Bass (1985a), who demonstrated that empirically transformational and transactional leadership were two positively correlated dimensions. Furthermore, transformational added to transactional leadership effects.
Empirical leadership research up to the late 1970s attended mainly to observable, short-term, leader-follower relations in small groups on the micro level of organizations. There was much less empirical research about senior executives and heads of organizations at the macro level or leaders of societies at the meta-level, although much had been written about leadership at the higher levels. In the mid-1970s, the survival of the field of leadership study was seriously questioned. In 1975, a commentator was reported to have quipped, “Once I was active in the leadership field, Then I left it for about 10 years. When I returned, it was if I had been gone only 10 minutes” (Hunt, 1999, p. 130). In 1975, John Miner argued that “the concept of leadership itself has outlived its usefulness” (Hunt & Larson, 1975, p. 200). Some theorists and practitioners thought the concept of leadership might whither away. They suggested that what was attributed to effective leadership could better be explained by social, organizational, and environmental effects (Pfeffer, 1977). Leadership was thought to be a fiction of the imagination, overemphasized in the highly individualistic United States (Hosking & Hunt, 1982). According to Hunt (1999, p. 130),
the study of charismatic and transformational leadership came in to save the day. … [A] major contribution, if not the major contribution of transformational and charismatic leadership has been its transformation of the field. This transformation involves a field that had been rigorous, boring and static … examining more and more inconsequential questions and providing little added [by] the plethora of published studies.
Transformational leadership represented a seminal shift in the field of leadership (Bass, 1993).
The New Leadership. Bryman (1992) labeled as the “new leadership” the introduction of transformational leadership and related concepts such as charismatic, visionary, inspirational, values-oriented, and change-oriented leadership. House and Aditya (1997) referred to these concepts as neocharismatic. The new leadership represents a paradigm shift that moved the field out of its doldrums (Hunt, 1999). Along with reinforcing the importance of transformational leadership, Burns (2003) agreed with Thomas Jefferson about the importance of leadership in the pursuit of happiness. Evidence of the transactional and transformational behavior of leaders in a wide variety of circumstances, political, business, education, family, sports, and law enforcement (Bass & Riggio, 2006) is well documented. Less well known is street-level transformational leadership of social caseworkers with their disabled or welfare clients (Dicke, 2004)
Burns (1978) defined a transforming leader as one who: (1) raises the followers’ level of consciousness about the importance and value of designated outcomes and ways of reaching them; (2) gets the followers to transcend their own self-interests for the sake of the team, organization, or larger polity; and (3) raises the followers’ level of need on Maslow’s (1954) hierarchy from lower-level concerns for safety and security to higher-level needs for achievement and self-actualization. Transforming leadership elevates the follower’s level of maturity, ideals, and concerns for the well-being of others, the organization, and society. The content of transformational leaders tends to be optimistic (Berson, Shamir, Avolio, et al. (1998). Transforming leaders point to mutual interests with followers. They engage followers closely without using power, using moral leadership. They transform individuals, groups, organizations, and societies. Between 1980 and 1985, Bass (1985a) formulated a multidimensional theory of transformational and transactional leadership and verified it with military and civilians describing their respective leaders. Burns agreed that transformational and transactional leadership were not opposite ends of a single dimension but multidimensional.
Measurement. Seventy senior South African executives (all male, one black) described how one such leader they had known in their careers had influenced them. Their descriptive statements were sorted by 11 graduate students into transformational and transactional. Seventy-three of the 143 statements on which the judges could agree were administered to 104 senior U.S. Army officers (almost all male). The officers were asked to describe their most recent superior, using a five-point scale of frequency, from 0 = the behavior is displayed not at all to 4 = the behavior is displayed frequently, if not always.
A first factor analysis of the 73 items was completed (Bass, 1985c) The factors described the behavior and attitudes of transformational and transactional leaders in three correlated transformational leadership factors: (1) charisma, (2) intellectual stimulation, and (3) individualized consideration. Later a cluster of three items was identified as inspirational motivation. Also, two transactional factors emerged that reflected positive and negative reinforcement, respectively: (4) contingent reward and (5) management by exception. They were uncorrelated with each other. Subsequently, Bass and Avolio (1990) relabeled the charismatic factor idealized influence because of the popular meaning of charisma in the public mind as being celebrated, flamboyant, exciting, and arousing. It was often a highly publicized creation of media hype. It was also associated pejoratively with Hitler’s effects on the German people.
Charisma was the subject of Chapter 21. As Bass (1985a) and others noted, it could not be separated factorially from inspirational leadership (Hinken & Tracey, 1999). Nevertheless, the charismatic leader is likely to be transformational, but it is possible—although unlikely—to be transformational without being charismatic. A highly intellectually stimulating teacher, for instance, may transform students without their regarding the teacher as charismatic.
Although inspirational motivation could not be separated factorially from charisma because of the conceptual differences between charisma and inspiration discussed in the previous chapter, a 10-item scale of inspirational motivation was maintained in the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire-Form 5X along with the other factor scales (Bass, 1985c).
This is probably the least recognized of the transformational factors. Avolio (1999) pointed out that a majority of managers and employees believe that their intellect is underutilized, yet in the postindustrial world an organization’s intellectual capital may be more important than its physical capital. Worldwide, at least 40 idea generation methods are known, but often they remain misunderstood and mistrusted by skeptics. Some, using intuitive association, such as brainstorming, are well known; others, involving systematic variation and idea structuring, less so (Geschka, von Reibnitz, & Storvik, undated). It is an intellectually stimulating challenge to persuade a group to use any one of these methods and to teach it how to do so.
Bass (1985a) obtained a factor of intellectual stimulation in U.S. Army officers’ MLQ descriptions of their superiors. Many subsequent factor analyses replicated this finding with a variety of samples of military, industrial, and educational managers and leaders (Avolio, Bass, & Dong, 1999; Antonakis, 2000). Items of this factor included such statements as “Provides reasons to change my way of thinking about problems,” “Stresses the use of intelligence to overcome obstacles,” and “Makes me think through what is involved before taking actions.”
Personal Creativity versus the Intellectual Stimulation of Others. There is a difference between possessing competence, knowledge, skill, ability, aptitude, and intelligence and being able to translate these qualities into action as intellectual inspiration and the stimulation of others. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover exemplified technically competent leaders who failed to inspire. John F. Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt are illustrations of presidents who were not as intellectually astute as Carter and Hoover but were far superior in their ability to stimulate others intellectually, to imagine, to articulate, and to gain acceptance of and commitment to their ideas. The proposals and ideas of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the liberal Democratic senator from New York, were repeatedly ahead of his time. He introduced original and provocative ideas that often stimulated liberal opposition rather than support. His 1965 report suggested that the black family was falling apart and social legislation was needed. He was roundly attacked by blacks and liberals. It was only in the 1980s that adverse black family statistics revealed Moynihan as a visionary. In 1970, he supported a guaranteed annual income for the impoverished. It was shot down by the Welfare Rights Organization with rightwing assistance. Welfare reform had to wait until 1988, when he supported the beginnings of workfare legislation. “No politician is as good as Moynihan at generating good ideas … (but not) getting things done” (Lemann, 1990, p. 4).
Intellectual stimulation is much more than a matter of broadcasting good ideas. For instance, in the public sector, Roberts (1988) demonstrated that the intellectual generation of ideas and framing of problems were not enough. Makers of politically innovative policies have to serve as catalysts by: (1) mobilizing and building support for their ideas; (2) circulating their ideas through various media available to them; (3) collaborating with other highly visible and reputable groups and organizations; (4) creating demonstration projects; (5) sponsoring reforms in the legislature; (6) positioning and developing supporters in the government; (7) enlisting champions to introduce their proposed legislation; (8) influencing and creating public interest groups and associations; and (9) monitoring and evaluating the extent to which the legislation that is passed conforms to the policies that were promoted.
What Leaders Do To Be Intellectually Stimulating. Intellectually stimulating leaders help to make their followers more innovative and creative. They question assumptions, reframe problems, and look at old problems in new ways. Public criticism of followers and their mistakes is avoided. New ideas are sought from followers. They are encouraged to “think out of the box,” to address problems, and to consider alternative solutions (Bass, 1998). Intellectually stimulating leaders see themselves as part of an interactive creative process (Brown, 1987). Not bound by current solutions, they create images of other possibilities. Orientations are shifted and awareness of the tensions between visions and realities is increased.
Intellectually stimulating leaders are often empowering (Spreitzer & Janasz, 1998). They move subordinates to focus on some things and ignore others. A pattern is imposed on a flow of events to simplify their complexity and diversity. The real world is made easier to understand (Bailey, 1983). Intellectual stimulation can move subordinates out of their conceptual ruts by reformulating the problem that needs to be solved. Wicker (1985) provided numerous examples of what can be done to move followers to “think out of the box.” Ideas can be played with by applying metaphors and similes (e.g., interpersonal attractiveness is like a magnetic field). The scale can be changed (e.g., a sandbar can be likened to a galaxy of stars). The absurd or fantasy can be considered (e.g., suppose water floated on oil). Alternative states can be imagined, such as particles becoming a wave. Nouns can be changed into verbs. The figure and ground can be transposed (e.g., to concentrate on the space around the object instead of the object). Contexts can be enlarged or subdivided. Hidden assumptions can be uncovered (e.g., failures may be due to poor planning, not to lack of ability). Infante and Gordon (1985) noted that it was more satisfying to subordinates if their supervisors argued for their own formulations and refuted other points of view, but it was more dissatisfying if the supervisors attacked subordinates’ self-concepts. Unfortunately, some people mistake argumentation for hostility. The former is favored in leaders; the latter is not.
Quinn and Hall (1983) proposed that leaders intellectually stimulate followers in one of four ways: rational, existential, empirical, and ideological. Rationally oriented leaders emphasize ability, independence, and hard work. They try to convince colleagues to use logic and reason to deal with the group’s or organization’s problems. Existentially oriented leaders try to move others toward a creative synthesis by first generating various possible solutions in informal interactions with others and their common problems. Empirically oriented leaders promote attention to externally generated data and the search for one best answer from a great deal of information. Idealists encourage speedy decisions; they foster the use of internally generated intuition. They gather only a minimum amount of data before reaching a conclusion (Quinn & Hall, 1983).
Intellectually stimulating leaders see themselves as part of an interactive creative process (Brown, 1987). Not bound by current solutions, they create images of other possibilities. Orientations are shifted, awareness is increased of the tensions between visions and realities, and experiments are encouraged (Fritz, 1986). Intellectual stimulation contributes to the independence and autonomy of subordinates and prevents habituated followership, characterized by the unquestioning trust and obedience of charismatic leader-follower relations (Graham, 1987). Intellectual stimulation is much more than a matter of broadcasting good ideas.
Chaffee (1985) suggested that three strategies are pursued in finding solutions to the organization’s problems: linear, adaptive, and interpretive. If linear data are gathered and analyzed, alternative actions are formulated with expected outcomes if a particular action is taken. If an adaptive strategy is pursued, the effort will be to adjust the organization to environmental threats and opportunities by being particularly cognizant of the revenues and resources needed from the environment. If an interpretive strategy is pursued, reality is less important than are perceptions and feelings about it. Values, symbols, emotions, and meanings need to be addressed. Neumann’s (1987) interview study of 32 college presidents found that with experience, the presidents tended to move toward more interpretive strategies if they had not initially emphasized them. The shift of experienced presidents away from purely adaptive strategies was most evident.
Military and political planners need to be encouraged to engage in second-curve thinking. They need to develop alternative possible scenarios of what is likely to happen after the victory they have planned for. In the same way, planners for organizations need to consider looking at alternative scenarios of how the organization and its environment is likely to be affected by the success of their first-curve plans. Royal Dutch Shell executives draw up such possibilities and distribute them widely to keep its executives thinking ahead to avoid being surprised (Handy, 1994). There was insufficient and inadequate second-curve thinking by the U.S. administration about what would happen in Iraq after the initial success of its first-curve plan to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime (Woodward, 2004).
Central versus Peripheral Routing. Intellectual stimulation takes people on what Petty and Cacioppo (1980) conceived of as the central route to being persuaded, which occurs when people are ready and able to think about an issue. It may be contrasted to persuasion via the peripheral route, which occurs when people lack either motivation or ability. Persuasion through the central route produces enduring effects; persuasion via the peripheral route lasts only if it is bolstered by supportive cognitive arguments. If persuasion is by the peripheral route, it is necessary only for the source of the persuasion to be liked. The distinction between central and peripheral processing has much in common with the distinctions between deep versus shallow processing, controlled versus automatic processing, systematic versus heuristic processing, and thoughtful versus mindless or scripted processing (Cialdini, Petty, & Cacioppo, 1981).
Individually considerate leaders pay special attention to each follower’s needs for achievement and growth. New learning opportunities are created, along with a supportive climate. Individual differences in needs are recognized. The leaders serve as coaches and mentors for their followers. They attend to the individual followers’ differential needs for growth and achievement. Followers are helped to reach successively higher levels of development. New learning opportunities are created in a supportive environment. “Walking-around management” is practiced. The individually considerate leader personalizes relations, remembering names and previous conversations. Two-way communication is encouraged. Tasks are delegated to provide experience and to develop followers. The individually considerate leader is an effective listener (Bass, 1998) and more delegative in management style (Gill, 1997).
Bracey, Rosenbaum, Sanford, et al. (1990) stated that leaders need to be caring by telling the truth with compassion, looking for others’ loving intentions, disagreeing with others without making them feel wrong, avoiding suspiciousness, and recognizing the qualities in each individual regardless of cultural differences. Greenleaf’s (1979) servant leadership heavily emphasizes individualized consideration.
When faced with changed processes making employees redundant or the need to cut costs, individually considerate management restructures the organization responsibly (Cascio, 1995). Whenever possible, employees are retrained and redeployed to avoid layoffs. Merck even arranged for temporary transfers of employees to other firms. Actually, it may be less profitable for firms to downsize to cut costs because of the expense of separations and rehiring when business turns around (McKinley, Sanchez, & Scheck, 1995).
Although they are conceptually different and form independent clusters of items, the component factors of transformational leadership uncovered by Bass (1985a) are intercorrelated. Sixty-six percent of the covariance of all the items in transformational leadership could be accounted for by the first factor of charismatic leadership (Bass, 1985c). An even larger amount was accounted for in a comparable sample of U.S. Air Force officers (Colby & Zak, 1988). Hater and Bass (1988) achieved similar results when they refactored the 70-item questionnaire that subordinates completed to describe their immediate management superiors. Onnen (1987) obtained similar findings from 454 parishioners who described their Methodist ministers. A single transformational leadership score can be meaningfully calculated for selected studies and analyses. The antecedents and effects of this transformational score have been compared with the effects of transactional leadership that is composed of the factors of contingent reward and management by exception. The results of extensive surveys of more than 1,500 general managers, leaders of technical teams, government and educational administrators, upper middle managers, and senior U.S. Army officers that were discussed earlier for charismatic leadership are also relevant for transformational leadership. Subordinates of these leaders, who described their managers on the MLQ-Form 5 as being more transformational, were also more likely to say that the organizations they led were highly effective. Such transformational leaders were judged to have better relations with higher-ups and to make more of a contribution to the organization than were those who were described only as transactional. Subordinates said they also exerted a lot of extra effort for such transformational leaders. If leaders were only transactional, the organizations were seen as less effective, particularly if most of the leaders practiced passive, reactive management by exception intervening only when standards were not met.
According to Burns (1978), transactional leadership is the exchange relationship between leader and followers aimed at satisfying their own self-interests. Its factors in Bass (1985c) were contingent reward and management by exception. The latter factor was subsequently divided into active management by exception and part of passive leadership and laissez-faire, the avoidance of leadership, delineated in Chapter 6. Contingent reward and management by exception are ways of looking at reinforcement leadership, discussed in Chapter 15. With active management by exception, the leader attends to each follower’s performance and takes corrective action if the follower fails to meet standards. With passive management by exception, the leader waits for problems to arise in the follower’s performance before taking corrective action in the belief that “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” (Bass & Avolio, 1990). “The transactional leader closely resembles the traditional definition of the manager” (Kouzes & Posner, 1995, p. 321).
Ten-item scales of transactional leadership were included with MLQ 5-R. High reliabilities (.85 and above) were routinely reported for descriptions of superiors by large samples of subordinates in military and industrial settings (Bass & Avolio, 1989). The 10 items of each scale were reduced to four in a short form (MLQ-5X) with some loss of reliabilities, as expected (Bass & Avolio, 1990).
This is a constructive transaction. The leader assigns a task or obtains agreement from the follower on what needs to be done and arranges for psychological or material rewards of followers in exchange for satisfactorily carrying out the assignment (Bass, 1998). For 207 British managers, Gill (1997) found that the managers who were directive practiced more contingent rewarding (r = .24). The psychological rewards may include positive feedback, praise, and approval. The material rewards may include a raise in salary, an award, or citation for merit.
Originally conceived as a transactional reinforcement, contingent reward correlates more with transformational than with transactional leadership. Explanations were found by Silins (1994) and by Goodwin, Wofford, and Whittington (2001). Contingent reward has two aspects. Silins found that contingent rewarding with external material rewards such as a raise in pay was transactional; contingent rewarding involving internal psychological processes such as praise was transformational. For Goodwin et al., the transactional factor was explicit reward, such as a commendation for good performance; the transformational factor was implicit, such as expressing admiration of the follower for good performance. Goodwin, Wofford, and Whittington (2001) completed a factor analysis of 154 employees describing their supervisors with the MLQ and a confirmation with MLQ data from an additional 209 employees describing their supervisors. Two CR factors were found and confirmed: explicit contingent rewarding and implicit psychological contracting. Consistent with these findings, higher-order factors unearthed in large sample factor analyses by Avolio & Bass (1999), Antonakis (2001), and others also showed that contingent reward could be both transformational and transactional. CR was transformational when the rewards were psychological, like supervisory recognition and praise for a follower’s good work. CR was transactional when the rewards were material, like increased pay.
This is a corrective transaction. If active, the leader monitors the deviances, mistakes, and errors in the performance of the followers and takes corrective action accordingly. If passive, the leader takes no corrective action before a problem comes to his or her attention that indicates unsatisfactory follower performance (Bass, 1998). The corrective action may be negative feedback, reproof, disapproval, or disciplinary action. Denston and Gray (1998) completed both qualitative and quantitative studies of MBE showing that MBE behavior fell into three categories: autocratic (directive), maintaining the status quo, and overregulation. As noted above, Gill also found that the more directive the leaders, the more they practiced MBE. Generally, MBE is lower in reliability than the other MLQ factors.
Transformational and transactional factors were conceived by Avolio and Bass (1991) as continua in leadership activity and effectiveness. Added was laissez-faire or nonleadership to the bottom of the continua in activity and effectiveness. By definition, transformational leadership was more active than transactional leadership, which was more active than laissez-faire leadership. Empirically, transformational leadership was more effective than transactional leadership, which was more effective than nonleadership. Avolio and Bass (1999) used 14 samples involving 3,786 MLQ survey participants describing their leaders to test nine factorial structures to determine the best fitting models. The best fitting models contained six lower-order factors: charisma (CH 1 IN), intellectual stimulation (IS), individualized consideration (IC), contingent reward (CR), active management by exception (MBEA), and passive avoidance (PA). Three higher-order factors emerged: transformational leadership and contingent reward, developmental exchange (IC 1 CR), and corrective avoidance (PA 1 MBEA). Antonakis (2001) and Antonakis and House (2002) found that the model of the full range of leadership remained valid, although they could point to a variety of moderators that affected results. These included the sex of leaders and followers, the risk and stability of conditions, and the leaders’ hierarchical level.
The pattern of factors that Bass (1985c) extracted provided a portrait of the transformational leader that Zaleznik (1977) had independently drawn from clinical evidence. Zaleznik’s leaders attracted strong feelings of identity and intense feelings about the leader (charisma). They sent clear messages of purpose and mission (inspi-rational leadership), generated excitement at work, and heightened expectations through images and meanings (inspirational leadership). They cultivated intensive one-on-one relationships and empathy for individuals (individualized consideration) and were more interested in ideas than in processes (intellectual stimulation). Tichy and Devanna (1986) concluded from interviews with 12 executives that transformational leadership is broader than charisma. They reported that transformational leaders were intuitive, cautious to avoid unrealistic expectations, empowering, and envisioning with clarity. Bennis and Nanus (1985, 1988) interviewed 90 public and private CEOs who said they made special efforts to inspire followers to greater productivity. Their followers said the executives raised their consciousness and provided a radiant but realistic vision of the future.
Marion and Uhl-Bien (2001) introduced complexity leadership, that enlarges transformational leadership to include catalyzing organizations from the bottom up through fostering the microdynamics of interaction among ensembles, coordinates the behavior among the ensembles. It allows for random effects and futures dependent on networks, structure, and relationships. It is based on complexity theory, borrowed by the social sciences from the physical sciences (Marion, 1999). Anderson (2000) suggested five leadership skills of increasing complexity needed by leaders to be transformational: (1) personal mastery to provide for clarity of beliefs and purpose of life; (2) interpersonal communications to build interpersonal relationships; (3) counseling on how to manage problems; (4) consulting about team and organizational development; and (5) versatility in styles, roles, and skills.
Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, et al. (1990) validated six transformational factors for the Transformational Leadership Inventory (TLI): (1) articulating a vision, (2) providing an appropriate model, (3) fostering the acceptance of group goals, (4) high performance expectations, (5) providing individualized support, and (6) individualized consideration. Podsakoff, MacKenzie, and Bommer (1996) showed that transformational leadership was generally independent of most contextual substi-tutes for leadership. Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe (2000) used Kelly’s Repertory Grid Technique to elicit constructs from 48 female and 44 male middle, senior, and top managers about the similarities and differences of managers with whom they had worked in the British Health Service or local government. To form constructs, the managers were asked to chose the most and least alike leaders who had “had a powerful effect on their motivation, self-confidence, self-efficacy and performance.” The 1,464 responses were factor analyzed to yield reliable factors that generally appeared close to the transformational components of leadership described above: (1) inspirational networker and promoter; (2) encourages critical and strategic thinking; (3) empowers, develops potential; (4) genuine concern for others; (5) accessible, approachable. Other factors described the personality of the transformational leader: (6) decisiveness determination and self-confidence and (7) integrity (trustworthiness, honesty, and openness). Two transactional factors surfaced, one concerned with (8) political sensitivity and skills (in local government) and (9) clarifying boundaries. This last factor also included involving others in decisions. The nine factors were formed into the Transformational Leadership Questionnaire (TLQ).
Kouzes and Posner (1987) extracted a profile of transformational leadership from interviews asking leaders to describe their personal best leadership experience. Subsequently, they used the interview information to develop the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) for followers to complete. They noted that transformational leaders (1) challenge the process, constantly searching for new opportunities, ready to experiment and take risks, and remaining open to new ideas; (2) inspire a shared vision, articulating direction, ideals, and the special nature of the organization; (3) enable others to act by promoting collaboration and cooperative goals and establishing trust and empowerment; (4) model the way by behavior that is consistent with the vision and instills values supporting the vision; and (5) encourage the heart with high expectations, supporting persistence, rewarding others for success, and celebrating achievements. Carless (1999) administered the LPI and MLQ to 777 subordinates of 695 branch managers in an international bank in Australia. The LPI scales and the MLQ transformational scales were highly correlated.
Yukl (1987) initiated the Managerial Practices Survey (MPS) (Yukl, Wall, & Lepsinger, 1990) by first organizing a taxonomy of leadership and management practices based on factor analyses, expert groups, and prior theory. In the MPS scales that resulted, transformational leadership could be seen conceptually in motivating and inspiring, intellectually stimulating, problem solving, coaching, and supporting and mentoring. Transactional leadership could be seen in recognition, rewards, informing, clarifying roles, and monitoring operations. Tracy and Hinken (1998) found correlations ranging from .67 to .82 between the MLQ components and four selected MPS scales: clarifying roles, inspiring, supporting and team building. House (1997a) substituted value-based for charisma scales. Included were articulation of a vision, communication of high performance expectation, displaying self-confidence, role modeling, showing confidence in and challenging followers, integrity, and intellectual stimulation. Behling and McFillen (1996) developed scales for rating leaders on displaying empathy, dramatizing the mission, and projecting self-assurance to enhance image, to ensure competency and to provide opportunities to experience success. Jackson, Duehr, and Bono (2005) reported on the utility of using a questionnaire to measure empowerment along with a questionnaire to measure transformational leadership to predict performance, job satisfaction, and commitment. Jaussi and Dionne (2004) showed that an assessment of a leader’s unconventional behavior (e.g., standing on furniture or hanging ideas on clotheslines) added in regression analysis beyond transformational leadership to the prediction of followers’ satisfaction and perceived leader’s effectiveness.
According to House and Aditya (1997), the theories of NLP include various theories of charismatic leadership (House, 1977; Conger & Kanungo, 1987; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993), theories of transformational leadership (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985a), and visionary theories (Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Sashkin, 1988; Nanus, 1992). House, and Shamir (1993) provided a chart of the behaviors to be found in these theories cited by their authors (Table 22.1)
As currently defined by theorists and empiricists such as House (1999) and House and Shamir (1993), no distinction is made between charismatic and transformational leadership. They prefer to merge the two concepts as charismatic/transformational leadership. They see the same common motivational elements in charisma and transformational leadership (excluding individualized consideration). They connect the merged concept to followers’ self-concepts, internalized values, and cherished identities. The concept correlates with increasing collective efficacy and high expectations. Goals and values are linked to a sense of mission and to an ideal vision of a better future. But Bass (1998) argues that although the same leaders tend to be inspirational, intellectually stimulating, and individually considerate as charismatics, it is useful to keep the concepts separate, for they involve different behaviors and development. Although inspirational motivation and charismatic leadership are highly correlated and charismatic leaders are inspirational, inspirational leaders may not necessarily be charismatic: General Omar Bradley is an example. Napoleon and Alexander the Great were charismatic, inspirational, and intellectually stimulating but not particularly individually considerate as they grew in power and success. Horatio Nelson, the British admiral, was a transformational leader in the truest sense. He was charismatic and idealized by the En glish, he inspired his seamen and officers, and he revolutionized war at sea. He was also individually considerate and tried to meet the needs of his officers and seamen (Adair, 1989).
More rather than less differentiation is needed between charisma and transformational leadership, according to Hunt and Conger (1999). Conger (1999) and Yukl (1999) further discussed the need to maintain the distinction. Beyer (1999) asked how a charismatic leader transformed an organization.
LMX focuses on the rated quality of the dyadic relationship between superior and subordinate (Graen & Scan-dura, 1986). Since it can be a motivating exchange between two parties, it was assumed to be transactional (1989). Nevertheless, Graen and Uhl-Bien (1991) examined how quality LMX develops over time. LMX is a transactional exchange early in the process and later may correlate positively with transformational leadership. Tejeda and Scandura (1994) found a positive common correlation between supervisors’ transformational leadership and the quality of LMX between supervisors and subordinates in a health care organization. Furthermore, Dansereau (1995) argued that the quality of LMX depended on the leader supporting subordinates’ self-worth and showing confidence in the subordinate’s integrity, motivation, and ability, as well as being concerned for subordinates’ needs. Greenleaf’s (1977) servant leadership and Block’s (1993) leader as steward come to mind.
Smith, Montagno, and Kuzmenko (2004) compared transformational leadership with servant leadership. While transformational leaders share and align their followers’ interests, servant leaders put the interests of their followers before their own. Both emphasize personal development and empowerment of the followers. Both facilitate the achievement of followers.
Transformational leadership may be more relevant in a dynamic, changing environment; servant leadership may be more applicable in a stable environment.
Table 22.1 Behaviors Specified in Charismatic, Transformational, and Visionary Theories of Leadership
SOURCE: Adapted from “Toward the integration of transformational, charismatic, and visionary theories,” by R. J. House and B. Shamir, in Leadership theory and research: Perspectives and directions (p. 85), by M. M. Chemers and R. Ayman, 1993. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Copyright 1993 by Academic Press. Reprinted by permission of Academic Press, Inc.
Leadership was an important aspect of W. Edwards Deming’s 14 points for Total Quality Management. Sosik and Dionne (1994) selected five of Deming’s points for improving quality—change agency, teamwork, trust building, short-term goal eradication, and continuous improvement—and their likely linkage to the Full Range of Leadership. They proposed that in line with Deming, transformational leaders are agents of change, encourage teamwork, promote continuous improvement, build trust, and eradicate short-term goals.
Transformational leaders can be directive or participative. Charismatic leaders may direct their dependents out of crises; inspirational leaders direct their followers with slogans like “Never again.” Intellectually stimulating leaders direct their followers how to think through problems. Individually considerate leaders decide that only some followers need help. Critics see transformational leaders as elitist and autocratic. Nonetheless, charismatic leaders can be participative, for instance, by sharing in the building of visions. Inspirational leaders may listen to their followers before asking for a consensus about simplifying their ideas. Intellectually stimulating leaders may help followers to reexamine their assumptions. Individually considerate leaders may encourage followers to give one another support when they need it (Bass, 1998). After spending 27 years imprisoned by the white South African government, Nelson Mandela was directive and transformational when he declared, “Forget the past,” and showed his strong support for reconciliation. Gill (1995) reported a correlation of .29 between inspirational and participative leadership.
In the same way, the transactional leader can be directive or participative. The directive leader, practicing contingent reward, may decide to reward followers for their good performance. The directive leader can practice management by exception by taking disciplinary action for an observed violation of the rules by followers. Gill (1995) found correlations with directive leadership of .25 with contingent reward and .20 with management by exception. The participative leader may practice contingent reward by asking followers what needs to be done to achieve common goals. The participative leader can practice management by exception by asking how observed mistakes could be corrected. Nelson Mandela was participative and transactional when he campaigned for his successor as president and promised voters better housing. Gill (1995) reported a correlation of .35 between participative leadership and contingent reward but –.18 with management by exception.
Individualized consideration, as measured by the MLQ, is empirically correlated .69 with consideration of the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire, yet they are somewhat distinct in concept (Seltzer & Bass, 1990). Consideration involves the leader’s friendliness, approachability, and participative decision making. Individualized consideration involves the leader’s concerns for each follower as an individual and with the follower’s development. It includes knowing the individual follower’s needs, raising followers to higher levels of maturity, delegating opportunities for follower self-actualization, and helping followers to attain higher moral standards. Individually considerate leadership is closely associated with quality orientation and good behavioral relations with individual subordinates, less so with relations with all the subordinates as a group. Leaders high on both scores may be either directive or participative (Bass & Avolio, 1993a).
Lipman-Blumen (1996) conceived of connective leadership as a contrast to instrumental leadership. Connective leaders intuitively focus on the interconnections among people, processes, and institutions. They make use of ethical social and political strategies to join their vision with the dreams of others. They strive to overcome mutual problems. They create a sense of community in which diverse groups can be valued members and enjoy a sense of belonging. They bring together others to encourage the assumption of responsibilities by active participants. They nurture potential leaders and successors. They build democratic institutions instead of creating dynasties and oligarchies. They dedicate themselves to goals beyond their own and demand sacrifices from others only after they have made sacrifices themselves. Connective leaders can also be instrumental. They will try to use others as well as themselves as instruments to achieve their common goals. Readers will recognize similar elements in connective leadership and transformational, charismatic, and servant leadership. Examples of connective leaders are leaders of voluntary organizations who attract dedicated workers by providing opportunities for ennobling action. They combine collaboration, nurturance, and altruism with the use of power and instrumental action. They assemble temporary creative teams of professionals for each new organizational project. They rally multiple short-term political coalitions to address diverse problems. They are dedicated activists, sacrificing careers, well-being, or even their lives for their community (Lipman-Blumen, 1996). Akin to constructive leadership, Parry (2002) validated a scale, Social Processes of Leadership (SPL). SPL was about influence, processes, relationships, interactions, and position in organized society. Parry found the scale highly correlated with various measures of transformational leadership.
A Hierarchy of Leader Effectiveness. Ordinarily, a hierarchy of effectiveness was found. Transformational leadership was more effective than contingent reward; contingent reward was more effective than active management by exception; and active management by exception might be positive or negative in effect on subordinates’ performance but was more effective than passive management by exception. Laissez-faire leadership was correlated moderately to highly negatively in effectiveness. Similar results were found for managers, project leaders, and staff professionals in a wide variety of firms and agencies (Bass, 1998) and in many developed and developing countries on five continents (Bass, 1997).
Vision arose as a leadership concept in the 1980s as a response to the need for firms to adapt rapidly to advancing technology and domestic and global competition (Conger, 2000). The concept of vision spread rapidly to nonprofit agencies and had always been of consequence to politicians and statesmen. Sashkin (1986, 1988) detailed and assessed the visionary leader. Vision is a notable correlate of the transformational process (Brown, 1993) and the transformational components of charismatic, inspirational, and intellectually stimulating leadership. As noted in Table 22.1, envisioning is included in most theories of charismatic and transformational leadership. The vision of the charismatic leader has both a stimulating and unifying effect on the follower (Berlew, 1992). Visionary leaders have a sense of identity, direction, and strategy for implementation (Nygren & Ukeritis, 1993). The vision is often a collaborative effort of a leader and colleagues and ties together a variety of issues and problems. To maintain their emotional appeal, it is better for a vision to be presented visually rather than only be posted or in writing (Hughes et al. 1993).
Purposes. Visions are goals that are forward-looking and meaningful to followers. They involve accurately interpreting trends or articulating future-oriented organizational goals. They provide a road map to the future with emotional appeal to followers. They help followers know how they fit into the organization (Bryman, 1992). They evolve in one or more of four ways from: (1) a leader with foresight who is sensitive to emerging opportunities; (2) networks of insightful organizational members; (3) the accidental stumbling onto opportunities and recognizing them; and (4) a process of trial and error with many experiences. They may be value and mission statements. According to Sashkin (1988), the cognitive skills required for envisioning are: expressing and sharing the vision with managers and employees in order to detail, revise, and review policies and programs, and to monitor their effects. Most people can envisage near futures up to one year, but few can think 10 to 20 years ahead, as might be required in a vision of the head of a large firm, political movement, or military organization.
A vision serves as a guide for interim strategies, decisions, and behavior. “Vision provides the direction and sustenance for change … and help us navigate through crises” (M. Hunt, 1999, p. 12). It is an important function in the public as well as private sectors (Berger, 1997). It is fundamental to effective executive leadership. Without the ability to define a desired future state, the executive would be “rudderless in a sea of conflicting demands, contradictory data, and environmental uncertainty” (Sashkin, 1986, p. 2). A vision integrates what is possible and what can be realized. It provides goals for others to pursue and drives and guides an organization’s development (Srivastva, 1983). Vision is a mental model of a future state of the organization (Nanus, 1992), an ideal image of the future (Kouzes & Posner, 1995). It connects beliefs about what can be done in the future (Thoms & Greenberger, 1995). Mikhail Gorbachev, in the 1980s, envisioned a unified Europe stretching to the Urals. By 2002, a step in this direction had been taken by Russia in accepting a seat as a limited partner in NATO.
Bennis (1982) called attention to the importance of vision to leaders. It was a major contributor to the success of 90 executives interviewed by Bennis and Nanus (1985). Likewise, Martin (1996) found that visionary leadership contributed to followers’ supportive attitudes. Envisioning is particularly important when the organization is facing illstructured problems (Mitroff, 1978). Conger (1999) viewed what distinguished charismatic leaders at higher organizational levels from others as the strategic decisions they formulated and articulated. The more the vision was out of the ordinary, the more it became challenging and a force for change (Conger, 1999). But for Harari (1997), “Vision must be pragmatically bifocal,” i.e., expected to encompass both current and future best opportunities. And Bruce (1986, p. 20) noted, “In the minds of CEOs … the vision is never clear, only a foggy haze and a multitude of conflicting signals. We see the future darkly, while ignorant armies of experts shout across a smoky field at one another.”
Example: J. Robert Oppenheimer. The primary source of the attractiveness of a vision to followers is their perception of the qualities of the leadership (Conger, 2000). This was illustrated by the case of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who in 1943 was appointed director of the newly founded Los Alamos National Laboratory to develop the atom bomb. I. I. Rabi (1969) said that based on his experience and personality, it was difficult to imagine a less likely choice. Oppenheimer had no administrative experience other than building the theoretical physics department at Berkeley. He was unknown to the government leaders who initiated and championed the project. He was seen as arrogant and nasty and at times made others feel foolish and inferior. It was expected that the director would be an expert in experimental, not theoretical, physics. Nonetheless, Oppenheimer succeeded brilliantly, first because he had a clear vision of the mission of the laboratory and was able to communicate that vision to organization members at every level, and second, because he was technically brilliant and outstanding in his intellectual stimulation, which helped colleagues think through problems. According to such scientists as Hans Bethe, Joseph Hirschfelder, Emilio Segre, and Edward Teller, he was “a genius in finding other people’s mistakes,” was a remarkably fast thinker, had an “iron memory,” and understood everything that was done in the lab, whether it was chemistry, physics, or machining, and then could coordinate the activities. He supported the vision by creating a laboratory environment of commitment and involvement of several thousand members, making each of them feel that he could contribute to the project. He overcame demands from higher authority for secrecy between laboratory divisions by organizing in terdivisional meetings and sharing of problems and progress. Trust in him was high because of his integrity (Ringer, 2002).
Vision Statements. An organization’s mission statement describes the activities to be performed for its clients, constituents, or customers (Yukl, 1998). It is not the same as vision. The core of a vision for the organization is its mission, but it adds meaning and purpose for the activities, arouses emotions, and is inspirational and intellectually stimulating. The vision should present an optimistic view of the future. It should express complex ideas in simple words and be a clear and credible statement of the future (Bass & Avolio, 1990). The vision should convey an image of what can be achieved, why it is worthwhile, and how it can be done (Yukl, 1998, p. 443). In a workshop for various sectors of a community, Berson, Shamir, Avolio, et al. (2001) sorted the vision statements of 141 participating leaders into 12 categories. They rated the “inspirational strength” of each vision and obtained four orthogonal factors. The first factor, optimism and confidence of the vision, accounted for 53.7% of the variance among the 12 categories. The factors were correlated with the MLQ assessments obtained prior to the workshop from the participants’ subordinates back at work. The factor of optimism and confidence correlated significantly .28, with charisma; .20 with inspirational motivation; .21 with intellectual stimulation; .15 with individualized consideration; and .15 with contingent reward. Specificity and direction of the vision correlated .15 with intellectual stimulation. McClelland and Winter’s motive imagery provided reliable and relevant measures of visionary statements. The effects of the statements were related to the expectations of government agency managers and managers in entrepreneural businesses. Their individual and unit performance in the government agencies were significantly affected by affiliative motive imagery. Power motive imagery in the vision statements correlated significantly with venture business growth in sales and profits in entrepreneurial firms (Kirkpatrick, Wofford, & Baum, 2002). Different factors emerged when a total of 672 vision statements were factored for 194 Singaporean respondents into (1) expertise, (2) strategic thinking, and (3) unconventionality (Khatri, Ng, & Lee, 2001).
The organizational culture plays a significant role. Visionary leaders turn their cultural ideals into organizational realities. In the process, they promote a philosophy that will be enacted by the vision’s policies and programs (Sashkin, 1988). Followers react positively when the vision reflects their values and provides information to direct their future behavior. The vision serves as a metagoal for the leader to pursue (Thoms & Govekar, 1997).
Vision Requirements. A new vision guides the leader in maintaining or changing the organization’s culture to redirect it into different missions (Bryman, 1992). For this, the vision needs to be properly communicated.
This can be achieved through leaders themselves acting as personifications of their visions and by proper attention to the rhetorical strategies by which the vision is communicated. … Equally, the leaders need to establish an organizational framework which will facilitate the accomplishment of the vision. … Leaders must constantly reiterate the vision and its desirability. (Bryman, 1992, pp. 137, 175)
The propagation of a vision is an important requirement of the CEO and top management. The CEO needs to align the TMT around the vision to effectively transmit it to the organization. The CEO needs to be the chief sense maker and sense giver. Although there may be negotiation, reformulation, and realignment, as the vision moves through the organization, the CEO remains responsible for its maintenance (Williams & Zukin, 1997).
Bennis and Nanus (1985) concluded, from in-depth interviews with 90 top directors and executives, that envisioning requires translating intentions into realities by communicating that vision to others to gain their support. Envisioning is the basis for empowering others, for providing them with the social architecture that will move them toward the envisioned state. It involves paying close attention to those with whom one is communicating, zooming in on the key issues with clarity and a sense of priorities. Risks are accepted, but only after a careful analysis of success or failure. Judge and Bono (2002) confirmed in surveys of 115 supervisors rated by 319 direct reports that transformational leadership was associated with vision content of higher-than-average quality.
Measurement and Correlates. Envisioning focuses more on success than on failure and more on action than on procrastination (Brown, 1993). Sashkin (1986, 1988) detailed the requirements to assess the visionary leader. The Leader Behavior Questionnaire (LBQ), developed by Sashkin and Fulmer (1985), a self-report of visionary leadership, included scales of focused attention, long-term goals, clarity of expression, caring, propensity to take risks, and empowerment. Stoner-Zemel (1988) found that visionary leadership, as measured by the LBQ, correlated with employees’ perceptions of the quality of their work lives. Ray (1989) showed that LBQ-assessed visionary leadership was related to a factory culture of organizational excellence. And Major (1988) obtained LBQ assessments in 60 high schools that linked the visionary leadership behavior of their principals with whether the schools performed high or low on various objective criteria.
Visionary leaders have a sense of identity, direction, and strategy for implementation (Nygren & Ukeritis, 1993). A 12-item Vision Ability Scale was validated by Thoms and Blasko (1999). For samples of a total of 891 college leaders attending the same national program in various locations, the scale correlated significantly .37, with self-rated MLQ inspirational motivation and .42 with the combined MLQ transformational leadership scores. Likewise, vision ability correlated .38 with LPI inspiring a shared vision. Significant positive correlations were also found with measures of optimism, positive outlook, and future time perspective. Baum, Locke, and Kirkpatrck (1998) used a longitudinal design to collect data from 183 CEO entrepreneurs and selected employees. Structural modeling confirmed that the attributes and contents of visions expressed verbally or in writing directly led to future venture growth.
Vision and the Transformation of Followers. The transformational leader concretizes a vision that the followers view as worthy of their effort, thereby raising their arousal and effort levels. However, people who seek to identify with the leader but who are distant from him or her may become only partially aroused and committed and may not take action to conform to the leader’s initiatives. Nevertheless, if they are free to act and are not constrained by other commitments or the lack of opportunity, they will actually become committed to leaders even at a distance. This was confirmed by Judge and Bono (2002) in surveys of 130 leaders’ visions, each described by their supervisor and three direct reports, that transformational leaders articulate and use visions more than do transactional leaders. Followers are more confident in the visions of transformational leaders and more committed to the visions. Downton (1973, p. 230) described this process as transformational rather than transactional, noting its greater likelihood of taking effect:
The opportunity for action is apt to be greater than strictly transactional relationships because the follower who identifies with a leader can transform his behavioral pattern without necessarily exchanging tangible goods with the leader … a new moral code … can be put immediately into practice, no matter how distant the leader and the opportunities for organizational activity.
Visions of Reformers, Revolutionaries, and Radicals. Reformers of political movements and governments such as Vicente Fox of Mexico, are able to convey to others a vision of what the society would be like, how it would look, if its ideals were supported. They espouse myths that sustain the political community and its professed ideal cultural patterns. Practices that depart from the ideals must be changed or eliminated in the desired future state. Revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro, on the other hand, envisage a future in which the sustaining myths and current cultural patterns have been rejected and society has been fundamentally reconstituted (Paige, 1977). The future the revolutionaries envisage in their rhetoric of the new regime is surprisingly devoid of details or mentions of justice, despite their focus on the injustices of the regime they intend to overthrow by force (Martin, Scully, & Levitt, 1988). Radicals of both the political Right and the political Left are likely to be ideologues, inflexible in their vision with everything black or white, never gray, extreme in their views, and intolerant of those who don’t share their vision (Mumford & Strange, 2002). Nevertheless, radical dissenters may contribute to transformations by disrupting fundamental assumptions and beliefs of the mainstream majority (Elmes & Smith, 1991).
Rational and Emotional Elements. Cameron and Ulrich (1986) pointed to the rational and emotional elements of envisioning. The rational element articulates a vision in which questions about purpose, problems, missing information, and available resources are answered. The emotional element articulates a vision of a holistic picture that is intuitive, imaginative, and insightful. It uses symbols and language that evoke meaning and commitment.
Strategic Planning. Other aspects of envisioning that are relevant in different ways at different levels of management in the complex organization include the formulation of strategies based on the contingencies of the threats and opportunities of the organization, its resources, and the interests of its constituencies. Leaders must be able to formulate and evaluate appropriate organizational responses and arrange for their implementation in operations and policies (Wortman, 1982). Leaders will be more effective in doing so if they are proficient in gathering and evaluating ideas, storing information, thinking logically, and learning from their mistakes (Srivastva, 1983). As they rise in their organizations, the abilities that are required of them will shift from dealing with concrete matters that have short-term consequences and for which all the parameters are known to more abstract issues with greater amounts of uncertainty and longer-term consequences (Jacobs & Jaques, 1987).
Vision and Consciousness Raising. Long-range visions need to be detailed. The leader must understand the key elements of the vision and consider the “spill-over” effects of their future development. Furthermore, the leader must be able to communicate his or her vision in ways that are compelling, make people committed to it, and help make it happen. As Bennis (1982, 1983) concluded after his interviews with 90 innovative organizational leaders, the leaders could communicate their vision to clarify it and induce the commitment of their multiple constituencies to maintaining the organization’s course. These leaders also revealed the self-determination and persistence of charismatic leaders, especially when the going got rough. Yet they emphasized their and their organizations’ adaptability to new conditions and to new problems. They concentrated on the purposes of their organizations and on “paradigms of action.” They made extensive use of metaphors, symbolism, ceremonials, and insignias as ways of concretizing and transmitting their visions of what could be. They pictured what was right, good, and important for their organization and thus contributed considerably to their organization’s culture of shared norms and values.
This arousal of consciousness and awareness in followers of what is right, good, and important, which new directions must be taken, and why, is the most important aspects of intellectual stimulation. The “mass line” leadership of Mao Zedong illustrated its application to social and political movements. The scattered and unsystematic ideas of the Chinese masses about marriage, land, and the written language were converted by the Communist Party leadership into a set of coherent, concentrated, and systematic ideas for reform, which were fed back to the masses until they embraced them as their own. Mao even seemed to practice this strategy in his one-on-one discussions with others (Barlow, 1981).
Intuitive Aspects. For Pondy (1983), envisioning begins with intuitive interpretations of events and data that give meaning to new images of the world that ultimately can be clarified into strategies for an organization. Symbols and phrases are invented to focus attention on the strategic questions that are needed to get others involved in the process. As Jim Renier, the CEO of Honeywell, suggested, although the vision that emerges may be that of the single-minded chief, it often evolves, in larger organizations in particular, out of the chief’s give-and-take with many others during repeated reviews of the possibilities of the desired future state. Renier (as quoted in Tichy & Devanna, 1986, p. 128) put it this way: “What you’ve got to do is constantly engage in iterating what you say [about the vision] and what they say is possible. And over a couple of years the different visions come together.”
With their ability to provide images of the future state, inspiring leaders provide direction. A commonly used metaphoric vision, a cliché favored by political leaders, is the path, road, or journey that must be taken that gives direction to the followers (Tucker, 1981). But metaphoric visions can boomerang into apocryphal anecdotes and reverse in meaning. For example, King Canute wanted to convey his limitations to his courtiers and used his lack of control over the ocean tides to illustrate his point. History converted the metaphor into an illustration of the king’s foolish pomposity in trying to command the sea not to roll up the beach.
Can Envisioning Be Developed? Mendell and Gerjuoy (1984) accepted the conventional wisdom that visionary leadership cannot be effectively taught. Unless the talent is there already, managers can only be prepared to anticipate possibilities. If this were true, then only recruiting and selection would ensure an adequate number of capable inspiring leaders with vision. But is it possible for managers to develop their ability to envision and to be more inspirational leaders, in general?
Exercises provide practice that engages trainees in envisioning their organization’s future. In such exercises, executives are asked to talk about how they expect to spend their day at some future date—say, three years hence—or what they expect their organization to look like. Or they may be asked to write a business article about their organization’s future. These comments are then evaluated with feedback. From these visions, leaders and managers can draw up mission statements and the specifications that must be met by such an organization (Tichy & Devanna, 1986).1
Caveat. Visions may be too abstract, too complex, unrealistic, unreachable, or impractical. They may also be too inspirational. Fulfilling a vision may become an end in itself or a distraction rather than paving the way to a valued goal (Langeleler, 1992). Meindl (1998) regarded visionary leadership as a “vague and mysterious concept.” He cited Collins and Porras (1994), who declared that the best companies have not relied on visionary leadership to sustain their competitive advantage. Additionally, Meindl (1998) argued that much of the salutary reporting about the positive effects of visionary leadership on organizational performance may be a myth, a product of the “Romance of Leadership” (Meindl, 1995). Successful organizations often attribute the outcome, incorrectly, to effective leadership. Meindl (1998) suggested that there may be more significant leadership tasks than envisioning: “We too often rely on overblown, highly romanticized images of great visionary leaders with special cognitions of the future” (p. 22). Nevertheless, at the same time, Meindl agreed that organizational members could be guided by a shared vision of a desired future state and that a leader with the necessary skills can shape and foster that vision.
What predisposes individual leaders to transformational or transactional leadership? The answers include individual differences in personality and differences in cognitive, social, and emotional competencies. Much evidence has accumulated that age, education, and experience are likely to correlate with the transformational leadership and transactional leadership of both the rated leaders and the followers. Additionally, leaders’ inventoried or tested traits and beliefs have been found to be correlated with their leadership ratings by their followers, peers, and/or superiors. In turn, these ratings have been found to be dependent on the traits of the followers.2
Personality predictors of transformational leadership have been found in a wide variety of sites, ranging from business and industry to community leaders’ programs. According to Popper and Mayseless (2002), the internal world of the transformational leader is characterized by the motivation to lead, self-efficacy, and the capacity to relate to others in a prosocial way. The transformational leader is optimistic and open to new experiences and others’ points of view. There is a disposition for social dominance, the capacity to serve as a role model, and a belief in the ability to influence others. As noted in Chapter 5, the Big 5 structure of personality with its five factors, each with several facets, has provided a widely accepted way to structure the study of personality as a predictor of performance. For example, Judge and Bono (2001) collected 14 samples of community leaders’ Big 5 NEOAC scores and their facets using the Costa and McCrae (1992) 240-item NEO Personality Inventory. Also, the 261 leaders were each MLQ-rated by one or two subordinates. The simple correlations of charisma, inspirational leadership, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration correlated with extraversion, openness, and agreeableness, respectively, as follows: extraversion, .22, .24, .14, and .23; openness, .18, .22, .10, and .21; and agreeableness, .28, .21, .24, and .23. Neuroticism and conscientiousness did not correlate with any of the transformational leadership factors. The MLQ transactional factor of contingent reward was negatively correlated –.20 with agreeableness. Passive management by exception correlated –.15 with agreeableness and –.18 with conscientiousness
Lim and Ployhart (2000) correlated the five NEOAC factors with the transformational leadership scores of the leaders of 39 Singaporean combat teams. The 202 team followers used the MLQ to rate their respective team leaders. Correlations of transformational leadership of the leaders with the five personality factors NEOAC, measured by the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) were as follows: neuroticism, –.39; extraversion, .31, openness, –.08; agreeableness, –.29; and conscientiousness, –.09. Among the 79 studies classified in terms of the Big-Five factors in the meta-analysis by Judge, Bono, Iies, et al. (2000), reviewed in Chapter 5, 11 to 15 correlations between each of the NEOAC categories and judgments of transformational leadership were significant, as follows: neuroticism, –.21; extraversion, .25; openness, .30; agreeableness, .27; and conscientiousness, .19. In line with predictions, Bommer, Rubin, and Bald-win (2004) found that cynicism about change among 2,247 subordinates correlated –.29 with the transformational leadership of their focal leaders. This was offset by the correlation of .45 when transformational peer leadership of the 227 managers was present. Van Eron and Burke (1992) completed a survey of 128 senior executives and their 615 subordinates from a global firm and showed that the executives who described themselves as sensing rather than intuitive on the MBTI were more inspirational on the MLQ. Also, they were more judging than perceiving, according to their subordinates (r = .44; .30). They also were more likely to regard work as a strong sense of mission (r = .34; .23).
Military Studies. Clover (1988) compared on selected personality traits U.S. Air Force Academy com missioned officers who scored higher in charisma, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration on the MLQ with those who scored lower. Clover concluded that the transformational leaders were more likely to be more flexible, more compassionate, more pragmatic, and less tough. Ross and Offerman (1997) replicated the study with 40 Air Force Academy officers who completed the Adjective Checklist (ACL) (Gough & Heilbrun, 1983) and 4,400 cadets who completed a shortened form of the MLQ on the officer who commanded their squadron. Four cadets also completed the ACL on their squadron commander. The officers’ self-ratings on the ACL were combined with the four cadets’ ACL ratings to provide the personality trait measures. Transformational officers were more self-confident, more pragmatic, more nurturant, less critical, and less aggressive.
Avolio, Bass, Atwater, et al. (1994) examined the tested personality traits of junior-year cadet officers at Virginia Military Institute (VMI). MLQ ratings were provided by their subordinates. Hardiness (Kobasi, Maddi, & Puccelli, 1982) and physical fitness correlated with the cadet officers’ transformational leadership. Atwater and Yammarino (1993) correlated Cattell’s (1950) 16 PF Inventory personality assessments with MLQ ratings of 107 Annapolis midshipmen who served as summer squad leaders of 1,235 plebes. MLQ-rated transformational leadership, as appraised by the plebes’ superiors, correlated .24 with 16 PF self-discipline and .26 with 16 PF conformity. Additionally, Atwater and Yammarino (1989) found that the Annapolis midshipmen squad leaders appraised by their plebe subordinates as transformational described themselves as more likely to react emotionally and with feeling.
Community Leaders. Avolio and Bass (1994) correlated the Gordon (1963) Personal Profile (GPP), a forced-choice inventory, with MLQ ratings by subordinates of 118 leaders in their various public and private agencies and business firms in one middle-sized city in the United States. GPP ascendancy and sociability scores correlated .21 and .23 with charisma and inspirational motivation, respectively. Bass and Avolio also administered a sense of humor scale, which correlated positively but not significantly with all four components of transformational leadership. The MLQ component scores of the community leaders were also correlated with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Charisma and individualized consideration were predicted, respectively, by more MBTI feeling and less thinking (r = .25, .22). Inspirational motivation was predicted by intuition (r = .20) and not sensing (r = .19). The transactional factor of passive management by exception correlated with more sensing (r = .23) and less intuition (r = .28).
A meta-analysis by Lowe, Kroek, and Sivasubrahmanian (1996) compared public with private organizations and showed that leaders from public organizations were higher in mean factor scores than leaders from private ones in transformational leadership: charisma, –.61 versus –.33; individualized consideration, –.58 versus –.33; and intellectual stimulation, –.52 versus –.40. They also differed in transactional management by exception, –.41 versus –.16, and contingent reward, 1.85 versus 1.75. The meta-analysis also compared military with civilian organizations. Military leaders were higher than civilians in the factor mean scores for transformational leadership and for management by exception.
Cognitive, social, emotional, and other competencies have been found to be significant antecedents of transformational and transactional leadership, especially social and emotional competence (Bass, 2002). Older and more experienced Dutch managers, usually at higher organizational levels, saw a greater need for inspirational leadership, cognitive, and social competence. Younger Dutch respondents viewed their leaders as more transactional, especially if they were in sales or marketing (Tail-lieu, Schruijer, & van Dijck, undated).
Cognitive Competence. According to Wofford and Goodwin (1994), cognitive ability is what distinguishes transformational from transactional leaders. Subordinates’ MLQ ratings of the charisma and inspirational motivation of 782 managers correlated .13 and .16, respectively, with the Owens Biographical Questionnaire scale of intelligence (Southwick, 1998). Subordinate ratings of charisma, inspirational motivation, and intellectual stimulation correlated .33, .33, and .23 respectively, with management commitee evaluations of middle managers’ good judgment (Hater & Bass, 1988). Cattell’s (1950) 16 PF Inventory intelligence score correlated .20 with midshipmen’s transformational leadership. However, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) failed as a significant predictor of transformational leadership among midshipmen (Atwater & Yammarino, 1993) and military cadets (Avolio, Bass, Lau, et al., 1994).
Social Competence. The use of humor was found by Avolio, Howell, and Sosik (1999) to correlate .56 with the transformational leadership behavior of 115 Canadian managers and executives and .45 with their practice of contingent reward.
Eloquence is one of the most important competencies for transformational leaders. Persuasiveness and social sensitivity, as obtained from Owens’s biodata, correlated between .14 and .22 with charisma and inspiration (Southwick, 1998). For Hater and Bass, the correlations with the transformational leadership factors were .32, .33, and .33 with the quality of the managers’ communications. According to their 968 subordinates, Israeli industrial managers who were more transformational leaders were more open, informal, frank, careful listeners and careful transmitters on the Klauss & Bass Communications Style Inventory (1982). Correlations ranged from .30 to .64 (Berson, 1999). Social sensitivity in biodata correlated .14 and .18 with charisma and inspirational motivation and .15 with individualized consideration (Southwick, 1998). Sociability and ascendance on the Gordon Personal Profile correlated between .21 and .25 with the charisma and inspirational motivation of community leaders (Avolio & Bass, 1994).
Emotional Competence. Transformational leaders were higher in their internal locus of control (Rotter, 1966). Internal locus of control, as measured by the Personality Orientation Inventory (Shostrum, 1974), correlated higher (between .33 and .46) with the four transformational components as obtained from the subordinates of Digital Equipment executives (Gibbons, 1986). Internal locus of control of 78 senior executives in a Canadian financial institution correlated significantly with a short version of the MLQ rated by an average of four followers, as follows: charisma, .18, .25, and individualized consideration, .33. (Howell & Avolio, 1993). Similarly, inner direction on the Personal Orientation Inventory (Shostrom, 1974) of 20 Digital Equipment executives correlated .37, .33, and .44 respectively, with the three transformational factors of charisma, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration, as MLQ-rated by their subordinates.
Other emotional competency (or emotional intelligence) assessments that were antecedents of transformational leaders included self-acceptance, .43 to .46 (Gibbons, 1986) and significant biodata antecedents such as self-esteem, self confidence, being energetic, having a strong work ethic and sense of responsibility, setting difficult self-goals, and being comfortable in new situations (Southwick, 1998). In an experiment by Newcombe and Ashkanasy (2002), when 537 participants evaluated videotaped leaders, they rated leaders more favorably if the leader’s positive or negative emotional facial expressions were congruent with the emotional content of their verbal messages. According to a study by McColl-Kennedy and Anderson (2002), frustration had a negative mediating effect on the impact of transformational leadership. The emotion of optimism had a bolstering effect.
Emotional competencies that significantly predicted transformational leadership were hardiness (Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn, 1982), optimism, positive thinking, behavioral coping, feeling over thinking (Atwater & Yam-marino, 1993); risk taking (Hater & Bass, 1988); personal adjustment and nurturance (Ross & Offerman, 1997). The optimism and positive thinking of transformational leaders was confirmed by Speitzer and Quinn (1996). Ashkanasy and Tse (2000) inferred that transformational leaders have a positively biased schema for processing information. They constructed a model that, among other things, showed that transformational leaders were in touch with their own emotions, could regulate their own emotions, and were emotionally stable and less stressed. Transformational leaders could control their own and others’ emotions. They had emotional intelligence (Das-borough, 2002). Pastor and Nebeker (2002) reported that among 170 executives, managers, and supervisors and 380 to 450 subordinates, emotional reasoning correlated .33 with contingent reward but understanding emotions was negatively correlated with active and passive management by exception (r = –.29; –.28).
A study of how the organizational level of leaders’ positions affects their transformational and transactional performance was completed by Bullis, Kane, and Tremble (1997). They reported on three levels of U.S. Army officers. At the highest level studied were approximately 295 battalion commanders (lieutenant colonels); at the second level were approximately 440 company commanders (captains); and lowest were approximately 3,170 platoon leaders (lieutenants). Officers at each level were MLQ-rated by members one level below them. Table 22.2 shows the generally increasing scores at each level. Gottlieb (1990) found the same trend when she compared each of the transformational factor scores of 76 Veterans Administration hospital chief nurses and 545 associate chief nurses, except that management by exception was the same at both organizational levels she studied. The chief nurses were MLQ-rated by their immediate subordinates, the associate chief nurses, who, in turn, were MLQ-rated by their 1,532 immediate subordinates.
Bass (1985c) proposed that transformational leadership would be more likely to appear in organic organizations, as described by Burns & Stalker (1961), and transactional leaders would be more common in mechanistic organizations. In a comparison of 511 employees in a manufacturing environment with 539 employees in an R & D environment, Berson and Linton (undated) found that transformational leadership related more to quality climate perceptions and satisfaction with projects than with processes or manufacturing settings. Koopman (1991) expected that transformational leadership was more effective in innovative organizations and transactional leadership in bureaucratic organizations. For Quinn (1988), the orientation of organic organizations was supportive, innovative, and flexible (i.e., transformational). The orientation of mechanical organizations was toward rules, goals, and control (i.e., transactional). Den Hartog, Van Muijen, and Koopman (1996) randomly split the 330 employees in 28 departments in different Dutch organizations in business, social service, health care, and local government. One of the subsamples used the MLQ (8Y) to rate the transformational and transactional leadership of its supervisors; the other subsample completed the Focus-Culture Questionnaire about its departmental culture. The results were as predicted: transformational leadership correlated .72 with cultural support and .69 with innovativeness; transactional leadership correlated .52 with cultural support and .48 with innovativeness. On the other hand, transactional leadership was more prevalent than transformational leadership in departments with more rules and goals orientation. Transactional leadership correlated .54 with rules and goals in departmental cultures.
Both similarities and differences were present in the occurrence and effects of transformational leadership from one country culture to another (Bass, 1997). This was subsequently documented in the Globe Study (House, Hanges, & Javidan, 2004) involving more than 15,000 managers in the same three industries in 62 countries. Considerable amounts of both universality and specificity were found in the data from the different organizations and countries (see Chapter 33).
The findings were mixed. The followers’ locus of control made a difference. A thesis by Pastor and Mayo (1996) showed that for 180 college students MLQ-rating their classroom professors, internal locus of control correlated significantly with inspirational, individually considerate, and contingent rewarding teachers. Among 54 Israeli military groups, the followers’ level of development predicted their leaders’ transformational leadership (Dvir & Shamir, 2003). In the 1996 presidential election, those affiliated with the Democratic Party saw Bill Clinton, the Democratic candidate, as more transformational (r = .31) and the Republican candidate, Bob Dole, as less transformational (r = –.36).(Pillai & Williams, un-dated).
Table 22.2 U.S. Army Organizational Levels as Antecedents of the Mean Multifactor Leadership (MLQ) Means of Platoon Leaders (Lieutenants), Company Commanders (Captains), and Battalion Commanders (Lt. Colonels)
| Platoon Leaders | Company Commanders | Battalion Commanders | |
| Lieutenants | Captains | Lt. Colonels | |
| Attributed Charisma | 3.08 | 3.83 | 4.02 |
| Behavioral Charisma | 2.99 | 3.77 | 4.03 |
| Inspirational Leadership | 3.10 | 3.79 | 3.99 |
| Intellectual Stimulation | 2.83 | 3.45 | 3.56 |
| Individualized Consideration | 2.82 | 3.66 | 3.57 |
| Contingent Reward | 2.59 | 2.86 | 2.87 |
| Active Mgmt by Exception | 2.92 | 3.01 | 2.90 |
| Passive Mgmt by Exception | 2.61 | 2.20 | 2.14 |
| Number of Leaders Rated | 442 | 213 | 53 |
| Nunber of Subordinate Raters | 3170 | 440 | 295 |
SOURCE: Bullis, Kane, and Tremble (1997).
Ehrlhart and Klein (2001) created a scenario of a transformational district manager who communicates high performance expectations, exhibits confidence in followers’ abilities, takes calculated risks against the status quo, and articulates a value-based vision and collective identity. Scenarios of relations-oriented and task-oriented district managers were also created. A total of 267 University of Maryland students (62% female) of diverse ethnicities, almost all with work experience, were asked to rate their preferences to work for each of the three district managers. The students chose to work with the transformational manager if the students had participative work values (r = .23) and high self-esteem (r = .16). In addition to showing the expected positive effect on 502 service employees on their identification with the organization when their leaders were transformational, Epitropaki and Martin (2005) also found that the effect was greater when the employees were low in positive emotionality and high in negative emotionality. Harland, Harrison, Jones, et al. demonstrated that resilience was stronger among subordinates of transformational leaders (2005). But Bono and Judge (2000) found few significant effects on transformational leadership of various follower personality characteristics for more than 1,200 followers rating their more than 300 leaders. And contrary to expectations, Dockery (1993) failed to find that subordinates who were low in independence would respond more favorably to transformational leaders.
Numerous scholars expected that transformational leadership was a key to organizational and follower success. Bryant (2003) proposed that transformational leaders may be more effective in creating and sharing knowledge individually and in small groups but transactional leaders may be more effective in exploiting knowledge at the organizational level. Underlying the effects of the transformational leader on follower performance is its enhancing personal identification with the leader through bolstering the self-worth of the follower in contributing to what needs to be done and the social identification of the follower with the organization (Kark & Shamir, 2002). These scholarly expectations were supported by biographies of world-class industrial, military, and political leaders (Bass, Avolio, & Goodheim, 1987). The results of the extensive surveys of over 1,500 managers, leaders of technical teams, government and educational administrators, upper middle managers, and senior U.S. Army officers that were discussed in Chapter 21 for charismatic leadership are also relevant for transformational leadership. Subordinates of these leaders who described their managers on the MLQ—Form 5 as more transformational were also more likely to say that the leaders and the organizations they led were highly effective. Such transformational leaders were judged to have better relations with higher-ups and to make more of a contribution to the organization than were those who were described only as transactional. Subordinates said they also exerted a lot of extra effort for the transformational leaders. If leaders were only transactional, the organizations were seen as less effective, particularly if most of the leaders practiced reactive passive management by exception (intervening only when standards were not being met). Subordinates said they exerted much less effort for such leaders (Bass & Avolio, 1989). Subordinates and followers set higher purposes in their work for transformational leaders (Sparks & Schenk, 2001); performed beyond social expectations (Berson, undated); expended more effort and were more committed and involved (Harvey, Royal, & Stout, undated).
However, Vera and Crossan (2004) noted that strategic leaders can promote using both transactional and transformational leadership. Bono and Judge (2003) showed in two studies with diverse samples that followers of transformational leaders felt their work was more important and more in accord with their motives, values, and self-concepts. Dumdum, Lowe, and Avolio (2002) extended the meta-analysis of Lowe, Kroeck, and Sivasubramaniam (1996), validating the effects on followers’ effort, performance, and job satisfaction.
The commentary and empirical results of political leaders, educators, military leaders, and business leaders indicated that transformational leadership was more effective in military than civilian studies. Also, management by exception was less effective in civilian than military studies (Coleman, Patterson, Fuller, et al., 1995; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996).
When faced with political chaos and an angry public, with policy making taken over by radical minorities and legislatures elected on the basis of single negative issues, Abels (1996) suggested that political leaders must compete by being more transformational. Rosenbach and Mueller (1988) used an abbreviated version of the MLQ to survey the descriptions of 110 fire chiefs by their 732 subordinates and again showed that the transformational leader components were more highly correlated with the subordinates’ perceptions of effectiveness and satisfaction than were the components of transactional leadership.
Police officers of various ranks were asked to take the role of subordinates negotiating with transformational or transactional superiors described to them in scenarios. Officers whose “superiors” were described as transformational were significantly more likely to attempt to influence their superiors upwardly than were those officers whose superiors were supposedly transactional. Officers with transformational superiors were significantly more likely to employ rational tactics of upward influence rather than try to be ingratiating or use direct requests and strong emotion (Deluga & Sousa, 1990). South African cricket union chief executive officers rated their teams as more effective on the Effectiveness Survey for Cricket Administration if the executives were more transformational in their MLQ scores, according to ratings by their subordinates (Ristow, Amos, & Staude, 1999). Onnen (1986) demonstrated that Methodist ministers who were transformational generated more growth in their church membership, budgets, and attendance at Sunday services.
Many historical examples can be cited about the effects of transformational and transactional leaders on international relations. Henry Kissinger’s (1994) description of U.S. diplomacy was transformational when it emphasized ideals of democracy, freedom, and individualism and the United States was a haven for the oppressed of Europe. Vision drove the American dream of a continentwide country. The purchases of the Louisiana Territory and of Alaska were due to the visionary leadership of President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 and Secretary of State John Seward in 1867. On the other hand, diplomats negotiate deals between countries in which much transactional leadership is exerted to exchange resources for agreements and promises. Threats and counterthreats are used to try to forestall actions of competing parties.
C. Patterson (1995) suggested that college faculty needed to be transformational leaders in order to inspire their students to become more active, enthusiastic learners. Sergiovanni (1990) posited that when transformative leadership results in moral authority that goes beyond bureaucratic direction and unites followers in pursuit of higher-level goals, commitment and performance far exceed expectations. Leaders’ vision, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation lie behind improved teachers’ practices, according to a large-scale qualitative study of innovation in the Netherlands (Geijsel, Sleegers, & van den Berg, 1999). Similar conclusions were reached about the positive correlations obtained between effectiveness and the factors of transformational leadership for vocational education administrators (Daughtry, 1997), chairpersons of university academic departments (Brown & Moshavi, 2002), public school principals (Kirby, Paradise, & King, 1992; Leithwood, 1994), private school principals, and principals of private schools (Hoover, 1987) and similarly for chairpersons of academic university departments. Among 440 university faculty in 70 departments, faculty satisfaction was positively correlated with the transformational leadership of their department heads (Brown & Moshavi, 2002). When 120 liberal arts undergraduates rated each one of their instructors in the arts and sciences as higher in transformational leadership, they also indicated that the instructor was more respected, trusted, and involving, as well as more satisfying and effective (Harvey, Royal, & Stout, 2003).
Using enrollment growth as an indicator of institutional effectiveness, Cowen (1990) found it to be correlated with transformational leadership on the part of 153 university presidents. Vistro (1999) obtained a positive relationship between the performance of Filipino Teacher Licensure exams and the transformational leadership of the deans and chairpersons of the private teacher education institutions the teachers had attended. Again in the Philippines, if schoolteachers rated their principal as transformational leaders, student learning was better (Catanyag, 1995). Philbin (1997) found that teacher satisfaction, perceived school effectiveness, and effort were higher if the high school principal was transformational. Students’ learning, as measured by Indiana’s annual achievement test, was greater, but only if the students were higher in cognitive ability and socioeconomic status. Students lower in cognitive ability and socioeconomic status did not benefit from the principal’s style of leadership. Major (1988) reported that pupils demonstrated better performance in schools led by principals who were high rather than low in transformational leadership. Following a review of six qualitative and 15 quantitative studies of the effects of transformational leadership in schools by Leithwood, Tomlinson, and Genge (1995), Leithwood (1995) concluded that the effects of transformational leadership included: (1) identification of goals, development of a schoolwide vision, and its inspirational dissemination, along with high expectations for the functioning of teachers and students; (2) involvement of staff, teachers, parents, and students; (3) development of structures from the bottom up; and (4) development of a collaborative culture. Effectiveness was seen in the professional development of the teachers and the expansion of their problem-solving capacity. Leithwood and Stein-bach (1991) noted that the transformational leadership of effective school principals would show up in their expert everyday problem solving. They can articulate interpretations of problems for others and share with others their strong concerns about problems. They demonstrate respect for others and strong appreciation of professional and human values. Major (1988) obtained LBQ assessments in 60 high schools that linked the visionary leadership behavior of school principals with how well the schools performed on various objective criteria.
As noted in the preceding chapter, Yammarino and Bass (1988, 1989) collected subordinates’ MLQ ratings of a 5% representative sample of the junior commissioned officers serving in the U.S. surface fleet. Also obtained from the superiors for the 186 officers were their cumulative fitness reports and recommendations for early promotion. The component factors of transformational leadership correlated as follows with fitness and promotion recommendations, respectively: (1) charisma, .38, .37; (2) inspirational motivation, .25, .28; (3) intellectual stimulation, .31, .34; and (4) individualized consideration, .21, .24. The transactional factors describing the subordinates correlated with their superiors’ appraisals as follows: (5) contingent reward, .20, .24; (6) active management by exception, .22, .28; (7) passive management by exception, –.05, –.04; and (8) laissez-faire leadership, –.31, –.31. Similarly, transformational leadership of focal officers in Marine Corps transport squadrons in terms of MLQ ratings from their supervisor, peers, and subordinates had a strong relationship with the effectiveness of the focal officers and unit cohesion and morale (Salter, 1989). Findings were the same for correlations obtained in ratings by subordinates of U.S., Canadian, and German field-grade officers serving in NATO (Boyd, 1988). Masi and Cooke (2000) found that the MLQ transformational leadership of 78 company commanders accounted for 36% of the variance in motivation of their 145 army recruiting station managers. Positive correlations were routinely found between transformational leadership and satisfaction with military leaders and with the unit led by the leader (Lowe, Kroeck, and Sivasubramanian, 1996). For instance, the 4,400 Air Force Academy cadets who MLQ-rated the commissioned officers in charge of their squadron yielded significant MLQ correlations with satisfaction with their squadrons as follows: charisma, .43; individualized consideration, .38; and intellectual stimulation, .23.
Clover (1989) used an abbreviated version of the MLQ to correlate the descriptions of 3,500 subordinates at the U.S. Air Force Academy of their commissioned officer squadron commanders and various measures of their squadrons’ performance. Commanders who received higher ratings in transformational leadership led better-performing squadrons and were more likely to be seen as preferred role models by the cadets. On the other hand, open-ended questions in interviews with cadets revealed that transactional squadron leaders were perceived as selfish, lacking in empathy, social skills, and trust. They made rash decisions and caused frustration, reduced morale, and created disunity in the group (Clover, 1990). At the U.S. Military Academy (West Point), 437 junior year cadets MLQ-rated their 250 senior-year cadet leaders. The transformational leadership scores of the cadet leaders significantly correlated .20 with their military performance grades as seniors. Their corresponding transactional scores correlated .01 with their military performance grades (Bartone & Dardis, 2001). On the other hand, Ross and Offerman (1994) failed to find that the academic, athletic, or military performance of Air Force Academy cadets was predicted by the transformational leadership of their commissioned officers. They did find that contingent reward correlated .34 with satisfaction.
If widely practiced in a firm, transformational leadership ought to earn the firm a corporate image as a good company to work for and to do business with (Bass, 1990). It should help recruiting and improve organizational and individual development. Many studies have found positive correlations between subordinate ratings of the transformational leadership of managers and professionals and their effectiveness as leaders. Posner and Kouzes (1990) found that scores based on their five transformational leadership practices as a whole accounted for 55% of the variance in subordinates’ appraisals of the effectiveness of their leaders. Shea and Howell (1998) proposed that transformational leadership enhanced followers’ self-efficacy and outcome expectancies.
National Findings. Williams, Turner, and Parker (2000) reported that those of 211 Australian manufacturing technicians who rated their team supervisors as transformational were more likely to comply with safety regulations and were more likely to take safety initiatives. Zhu, Chew, and Spangler (2005) demonstrated that CEOs’ transformational leadership, mediated with a committed and capable workforce, produced superior organizational outcomes. Singer (1985) showed that employees in New Zealand preferred working with leaders who were more transformational than transactional. In the United States, at Federal Express, transformational leaders were found to assume a focal role in innovation by creating a learning orientation that promoted organizational learning (Hult, 1995). In Canada, Howell and Avolio (1993) obtained strong positive results showing that the consolidated business units of a Canadian insurance company were significantly more likely to reach targeted quotas a year later if the 78 senior managers had been MLQ-rated as transformational a year before. (The reverse was true for transactional managers.) In a study of 267 employees in three Dutch organizations, Den Hartog (2000) found that if 267 employees in three Dutch organizations rated their supervisors as more inspirational, the employees were more emotionally committed to their line of work, but Den Hartog failed to find that the rated inspirational leadership of the supervisors predicted employee self-efficacy. In 24 German firms, positive and significant regressions were found between the transformational leader behavior of supervisors and innovation among 161 R & D, marketing, and HR employees. Task performance was predicted to the same extent, but active management by exception by the supervisors was contraindicated (Rank, Nelson, & Xu, 2003). In Austria, the MLQ transformational leadership scores of 120 branch bank managers predicted long-term market share and customer satisfaction (Geyer & Steyner, 1998). On North Sea oil rig platforms off the coast of Scotland, supervisors rated more transformational by their subordinates were more effective (Carnegie, 1995). Transformational middle and top managers in a large Israeli telecommunications firm were more effective communicators, according to their immediate subordinates. They conveyed strategic organization goals better. Their subordinates were more familiar with the goals of the organization (Berson & Avolio, 2004). In a Chinese state enterprise, transformational managers, as rated by their subordinates, were judged to be more effective (Davis, 1997). Shin and Zhou (2003) demonstrated that creativity was greater among 290 employees in 46 Korean companies if their supervision was transformational. At three Japanese nuclear power stations, both transformational supervisors and their subordinates received better performance ratings by 566 maintenance employees than did their transactional counterparts (Bettin, Hunt, Macauley, et al., 1992).
Labor Leadership. The transformational leadership of union stewards predicted greater participation of members in union activities and loyalty to the union (Kelloway & Barling, 1993). Many labor union presidents transformed the everyday lives of working men and women. They were shapers of a new order and movers, shakers, and servants of the labor movement (Dubinsky & Van Tine, 1992).
Other Findings. Zorn (1988) observed that the transformational leaders among 73 pairs of small-business owners and their employees were more person-centered and more complex interpersonally. Sridhar, Valecha, and Sridhar (1994) obtained positive relations between transformational leadership and follower empowerment: Bass (1990, 1998, 1999) reported that subordinates indicated that they exerted extra effort and were more satisfied with supervisors whom they rated highly in transformational leadership. In a medical technology firm, the frequency and quality of the content of information sought from their supervisor depended on how much 75 employees rated their supervisor as transformational (Madzar, 2001). Salespersons assessed as more transformational also performed better in sales (Garcia, 1995).
In six organizations, transformational leadership of supervisors correlated with commitment to their organizations of white-collar employees (Pitman, 1993). The commitment of 862 insurance employees was enhanced by the inspirational leadership of senior management (Niehoff, Eng, & Grover, 1990). In an experiment with 194 business students, Waldman, Bass, and Einstein (1987) showed that the performance appraisals of subordinates were higher if their leaders were described as transformational on the MLQ. Federal Express superiors of 54 managers rated the managers significantly higher in judgment, quality of decision making, financial management, communication, persuasion, and risk taking if the managers were described by their 306 subordinates as more charismatic or intellectually stimulating. No such significant correlations were found when the managers were described by their subordinates as practicing transactional leadership (Hater & Bass, 1988). Tepper (1993) reported finding that among 95 lower-level managers from a large financial institution, transformational managers were more likely to use legitimating tactics and to foster more identification and internalization in their subordinates, but transactional managers (as would be expected) were more likely to use exchange and pressure tactics.
Findings in Simulations. Similar results were obtained in simulations. Avolio, Waldman, and Einstein (1988) found that transformational “presidents” of simulated business firms generated more profitability, a greater share of the market, and better debt-to-equity ratios (Avolio, Waldman, & Einstein, 1988) than did the transactional “presidents.” Ahead of their time, Litwin and Stringer (1966) demonstrated that transformation-like leadership resulted in more productivity at lower costs than did authoritarian or democratic styles imposed on simulated business firms. Jung (2000–2001) found that the fluency and flexibility of divergent thinking in brainstorming in simulated business exercises was greater under transformational than transactional leadership.
Stress and Burnout. Selzer, Numeroff, and Bass (1989) found, as expected, for 875 part-time MBAs MLQ-rating their work supervisors that charisma, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration correlated –.52, –.36, and –.46, respectively, with the Gillespie and Numeroff Burnout Inventory (sample item: “I’m fed up with my job.”) (Gillespie & Numeroff, 1984). Management by exception correlated .22 with burnout. Leadership style and symptoms of stress correlated significantly but to a lesser extent. However, the part of intellectual stimulation that required backing opinions with reason correlated positively with burnout and symptoms of stress when charisma and individualized consideration were held constant.
Among Pennsylvania hospital nurse executives, 37% of the variance in effectiveness, 63% of the variance in the job satisfaction, and 89% of the extra effort their staff nurses made were accounted for by the transformational leadership model (Altieri, 1995). Gottlieb (1990) found that older Veterans Administration chief nurses and associate chief nurses were rated by their immediate subordinates higher in all MLQ factors of transformational but not transactional leadership. In 87 Spanish health care centers and 88 drug treatment centers, the family doctors, pediatricians, nurses, and clerks MLQ-rated the center coordinators. If they rated the coordinators as more transformational, they were more likely to regard them as legitimate in organizing, managing, controlling, and evaluating each team member. There were fewer role conflicts better interpersonal relations, and a greater sense of autonomy if the coordinators were rated as more transformational (Morales & Molero, 1994, 1995).
Some of the preceding findings on effectiveness of leadership behavior were based on ratings by the same person of both the leadership and the outcomes. Nonetheless, there is considerable evidence from meta-analyses that factors of transformational leadership correlate moderately positive or higher with effectiveness even when such results are eliminated from consideration. At least two meta-analyses of the correlations of subjective percept-percept ratings where the same rater provided both leadership ratings and outcomes were compared with correlations of transformational leadership ratings with objective measures of effectiveness free of same-source bias. The subjective mean correlations results were higher with same-source outcomes and lower with objective outcomes. For example, Coleman, Patterson, Fuller, et al. (1995) analyzing 16 studies involving 4,034 cases using rated subjective effectiveness and 11 studies totaling 577 cases using objective effectiveness, found that the factors of transformational leadership varied in mean correlation with subjective effectiveness from .45 to .48. The comparable figures for objective effectiveness varied from .28 to .36.
The possibilities of same-source bias were eliminated in a study of 90 U.S. Army light infantry platoons. On their home base, half the 30-odd riflemen in each platoon MLQ-rated the leaders of their platoon. The other half provided measurements, using a Team MLQ, of platoon or company effectiveness (potency, cohesiveness, etc.). Peers and company commanders also MLQ-rated the platoons’ leaders. The platoons then underwent 11 near-combat missions in a Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) accompanied by 2 of 38 trained observer-controllers (O/Cs) who evaluated the effectiveness of each of the leaders and the platoons after the first and last missions and 1 in between. There were significant positive correlations among the home base MLQ leadership ratings and the independently obtained measurements of home base platoon potency, cohesiveness, and effectiveness. The home base MLQ data significantly predicted the performance of the leaders and the platoons in the JRTC near-combat missions as evaluated by the O/Cs.
A structural model showed that direct and indirect home base MLQ and Team MLQ scores assessing the platoons, lieutenants, and platoon sergeants had significant path correlations with MLQ predictions from home base that could account for 14% of the variance in platoon effective performance at the JRTC. The indirect effects were mediated by potency and cohesion. The home base transformational leadership of the lieutenants and sergeants correlated .33 and .35 with potency and .27 and .46 with cohesion, respectively, which in turn correlated .17 and .26 with JRTC performance. Transactional leadership was negatively correlated with the mediators and often not significantly.
Another of the examples validating the effectiveness of transformational leadership free of same-source bias was obtained for Singaporean combat team leaders. They were rated in efficiency and quality at the end of their training by five supervisors each. They were also appraised in military combat efficiency and quality by an independent assessor following a one-day assessment as the trained teams dealt with six military tasks. The 202 team followers completed the MLQ on their leaders. Transformational leadership, as rated by the followers, correlated .41 with efficiency plus quality as rated by the supervisors and .43 as rated by the assessor (Bass, Avolio, Jung, & Berson, 2003).
Radical military innovations require champions, committed, persistent, and courageous, in advocating the innovation (Schon, 1963). Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, the commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces’ air force in World War I, championed airpower over battleships, and Admiral Hyman Rickover championed nuclear over conventional submarines. The same entrepreneurial supporters are required for the success of new business ventures, according to Collins, Moore, and Unwalla’s (1970) psychological profile of 150 entrepreneurs. Champions keep product innovations alive (Dougherty & Hardy, 1996). The same is true for the success of environmental issues. According to L. R. Anderson’s (1996) dissertation on 132 environmental champions, success depended on selling behaviors opportunistically, framing dimensions distinctive to the issue, packaging the matter as a business issue, and avoiding drama, emotion, and proenvironmental rhetoric. Action was inspired by an educational and intellectually stimulating approach. Howell, Shea, and Higgins (1998) completed a factor analysis of the acts of champions. Three factors were extracted: (1) demonstrating confidence in the innovation, (2) gathering support and involvement, and (3) persisting under adversity.
In comparison to matched leaders of established businesses, organizational champions were found by Ippoliti (1989) to score significantly higher on the combined four transformational MLQ scale scores provided by their subordinates. Champions also scored higher than average on the scales of charisma (3.15 versus 2.48), individualized consideration (2.83 versus 2.35), intellectual stimulation (2.75 versus 2.44), and inspirational motivation (2.49 versus 1.87).
Comparisons of Champions and Nonchampions. Twenty-five champions of innovation in information technology in 25 different companies and 25 nonchampions were matched by Howell and Higgins (1990) by company, age, salary, job, function, and education. They were identified from 153 interviews with colleagues and peer nominations. Themes drawn from content analysis of interviews with the champions and nonchampions were accurately classified 82% by discriminant analysis as champions or nonchampions. Champions were more likely to reveal ideological goals, confidence in self and others, and unconventional and environmentally sensitive behaviors. A factor of champion leadership behavior discriminated champions from nonchampions with 84% accuracy. Factor loadings on this factor were high for charisma .48; inspirational leadership, .77; intellectual stimulation, .36; and individualized consideration, .27. Other discriminating behaviors were risk taking, achievement, innovativeness, social adroitness, and endurance. Still another comparison of interviews of 19 pairs of matched champions and nonchampions of innovations by Howell and Boies (2004) revealed that the champions showed more enthusiastic support for new ideas, connected the innovation to positive organizational outcomes, and made use of more informal selling.
Burns (1978) originally argued that transformational leadership and transactional leadership are at opposite ends of a continuum. However, Bass (1985a) suggested that transformational leadership augmented the effects of transactional leadership. To specify the effects more clearly, Waldman, Bass, and Einstein (1985) computed a hierarchical regression analysis of transactional and transformational leadership on self-reported measures of effort and performance for two samples of U.S. Army officers and one sample of industrial managers. They first entered the two transactional leadership scores for contingent reward and management by exception into the regression equation. When they followed with the entry of the interrelated transformational leadership scales of charisma (containing inspirational elements), intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration, they demonstrated that transformational leadership had an incremental effect over and above transactional leadership. The incremental increases ranged from 9% to 48% for the different samples and outcomes predicted. For both outcomes and in all three samples, transformational leadership had a highly significant incremental effect, over and above transactional leadership. Seltzer and Bass (1987) obtained similar results for part-time MBA students’ descriptions of their full-time superiors on the transactional scales of initiation and consideration and the augmenting transformational scales. Waldman and Bass (1989) found the augmentation effect of transformational charisma on transactional contingent reward when predicting the fitness reports obtained by U.S. Navy officers. The same augmentation in leaders’ effectiveness was obtained when the transformational MLQ scale ratings of U.S. Army platoon lieutenants, company commanders, and battalion commanders of 3,216 soldiers were added in regression to transactional LBDQ initiation of structure.
The augmentation effects of transformational leadership on effectiveness and satisfaction were reported by King (1989) for high school and higher educational administrators and by Koh, Terborg, and Steers (1991) and Terborg (1995) for Singapore high school principals. Kessler (1993) reported an augmentation effect of transformational leadership on transactional leadership on employee job satisfaction in a research work environment. Howell and Avolio (1989) obtained results of an even more complex model of the role of transformational leadership among 76 Canadian insurance managers in their contributing to their organizations’ effectiveness. They combined the managers’ inner directiveness, their transactional and transformational leadership (MLQ-10), and their managers’ perceptions of the organizational culture. Accounted for was 36% of the variance in the sales targets that units met a year later, according to a hierarchical regression analysis. Transformational leadership alone accounted for one third of the accuracy of the multiple predictions from augmented transactional leadership in predicting sales performance.
Based on Shamir’s (1992) ideas about the importance of the followers’ self-concept, House and Shamir (1993) integrated theories of the new leadership. They centered the theories around how the charismatic leader increases the value and salience of followers’ efforts by connecting them to valued aspects of the followers’ self-concept. In this way, the new leadership theories “harness the motivational forces of self-expression, self-consistency, self-esteem, and self-worth” (p. 90). Charismatics have, in common with transformational, visionary, and other new-style leaders, role modeling, risk taking, image building, trust building and establishing competence. The leaders are intellectually stimulating but not necessarily individually considerate or adaptive. In their Neocharismatic Leadership Theory, House and Aditya (1997) emphasized four common characteristics of the various new-style leadership theories. They all attempt to explain: (1) how followers are led into attaining outstanding accomplishments; (2) how leaders achieve high degrees of motivation, commitment, loyalty, admiration, respect, and trust; (3) the importance of leaders’ symbolic, emotionally appealing, supportive, and intellectually stimulating behaviors; and (4) the leader’s effects on follower satisfaction, performance, self-esteem, and identification with the leader’s vision and values and the collective.
A Syncretic Model of Charismatic/Transformational Leadership. Behling and McFillen (1996) applied what they regarded as six attributes of leader behavior drawn from the literature on charismatic and transformational leadership. They developed an inventory of internally consistent and leader behavior scales: (1) displays empathy, dramatizes the mission; (2) projects self-assurance; (3) enhances the leader’s image, assures followers of the followers’ competency; and (4) provides followers with opportunities for success. Another section of the inventory of ratings dealt with followers’ beliefs in their leaders. The beliefs formed three distinct factors: (1) inspirational leadership, (2) awe of the leader, and (3) sense of empowerment. Additionally, the three belief factors correlated .63, .28, and .38, respectively, with ratings of how much the meaningfulness of work was experienced. The leader’s empathy and dramatization of the mission were inspiring. The leader’s self-confidence and image enhancement generated awe. Finally, the leader assured followers of their competency to provide them with a sense of empowerment and opportunities for success.
Northouse (1995) believed that transformational leadership had a strong intuitive appeal, emphasized the importance of followers in the leadership process, went beyond the traditional exchange models of leadership, broadened the concept of leadership to include the growth of followers, and placed emphasis on morals and values. However, he saw, as weaknesses, lack of conceptual clarity and implications that transformational leadership is a personal trait. Furthermore, he felt, it was elitist and undemocratic. Hoffman, Blair, and Helland (2005) could not find the expected agreement between subordinates’ ratings of transformational leaders and observers’ ratings. Gronn (1997) viewed transformational leadership as of little use in fostering organizational learning in the Anglo-American world.
Yammarino, Spangler, and Dubinsky (1998) completed a WABA analysis for the MLQ-rated transformational, contingent reward, and satisfaction of 111 salespeople and their 34 superiors embedded in 34 work groups. Only individuals made a difference. Dyadic and group relations were of no consequence.
The Taming of Charisma. Beyer (1999) argued that the current concept of charismatic/transformational leadership was a watered-down version dealing with ordinary rather than exceptional leadership, but Beyer contradicted herself by arguing that charismatic/transformational leadership presented a heroic portrayal of leadership. House (1999) agreed with her that too much emphasis was being placed on the effects of leaders on individual followers instead of group and organizational performance. There was a failure to relate specific follower behaviors to leader visions. Charisma was tamed by its dilution. Beyer added that Weber’s (1924/1947) concept of radical change by the charismatic/transformational leader was ignored. Ignored also was the importance of contextual and cross-cultural differences. But House faulted Beyer for ignoring the evidence, and refused to accept her other criticisms: confusing behavior and outcomes, recognizing charisma as transient, failing to account for powerful charismatic attraction, and failing to focus exclusively on truly exceptional and extraordinary leaders and leadership.
Couto (1993) decried the falling away in Bass (1985c) from the humanistic concept of transforming leadership that Burns (1978) had introduced. Transforming leadership was focused on leadership of political and social movements and social change; Bass’s transformational leadership emphasized its precursors and effects in formal organizations and agencies but did not exclude political leaders. Couto explained that, for Burns, the transforming leader changes followers into disciples whom, in time, others may follow. The leader is a moral agent who moves followers to be aware of how strongly they feel about their needs and to define their values so meaningfully that they can proceed with purpose. Transforming leaders are invested with power to use their principles to move followers to change others and themselves into persons who share both modal and end values.
The concept of heroic leadership is substituted for charismatic leadership. Followers place their confidence in heroes because of their reputation. Heroes are idealized, but they are not transforming since they lack the deeply held motives and goals shared by transforming leaders and followers. Nor are executives in formal organizations and institutions transforming leaders, since they do not ordinarily achieve social change. Couto concluded with the reasons for maintaining the differences between transforming and transformational leadership and their relevance to different contexts with an analogy:
Bass has done for transforming leadership what David Lilienthal did for the concept of “grassroots democracy” within the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). He has placed a radically transforming concept in the service of institutional practice. Bass, like Lilienthal, changed … radical transformation from social change to … achievement of institutional goals. (Couto, 1993, p. 6)
There are several problems with the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Management by exception is lower in internal consistency than the other factored scales. Different factor structures emerge in some studies. A single factor could account for transformational leadership based respectively on a Dutch version of inspirational leadership (Den Hartog, Van Muijen, & Koopman, 1997), the transformational components of the MLQ (Tepper & Percy, 1994), or the five transformational components of the LPI (Fields & Herold, 1997). Carless (1999) reported the same results for MLQ data and suggested that the underlying common element might be a general impression of liking the leader. Vandenberghe, Stordeur, D’hoore, et al. (2001) proposed in a factor study of 1,059 nurses in Belgium that the single factor of active leadership could encompass all of transformational leadership and contingent reward. On the other hand, Antonakis (2001) obtained results indicating that the MLQ components were structurally all distinctly different factors. Similarly, Bass (1985c), Antonakis (2001), Tejeda and Scandura (1997), and Avolio, Bass, and Jung (1999), among others, were able to discriminate three or four transformational factors from among scales of behavioral charisma, attributed charisma, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Second-order factors were extracted to facilitate the unbundling of the correlated transformational leadership scales.
Level of Analysis. Much transformational leadership research has examined the relation of the leadership to group and organizational outcomes. However, Yammarino and Dubinsky (1994) completed a WABA study for 105 drug firm salespersons (detail persons who call on physicians, dentists, and other health professionals). The analysis showed that the leader-subordinate relations could be accounted for by the individual differences among the raters of each supervisor of the detail persons. Each supervisor viewed each subordinate uniquely; each subordinate rated each supervisor uniquely. But it was also possible that each dyad of subordinate and supervisor was meaningfully different within the same group supervised. Some dyads might involve in-group members; others, out-group members. In any case, there was little or no explanatory variance left in the leader and whole group, as such (Dansereau, 1995; Yammarino, 2002; Yammarino, Dionne, & Chun, 2002). The relation of the leader to his or her entire group is usually the basis of leadership research, but these studies suggested that leaders did not differ from one another as much as a given leader differed in relation from one subordinate to another.
Lack of Ethnographic Studies. Gronn (1999) decried the lack of ethnographic studies of transformational leadership. These should be studies by trained observers over time of the dynamics of the leaders in action. Instead, he noted, “The bulk of transformational leadership research is confined either to orthodox, tick-a-box or circle-a-number respondent surveys of superiors or structured interviews with diverse informant samples” (p. 16).
Other Possible Biases. Ratings of transformational leaders may be strongly affected by the leaders’ celebrity status as well as by their popularity. How much salespersons were perceived as influential correlated .74 with their perceived ability, .68 with their perceived value, and .50 with their popularity, according to sociometric ratings of 202 salespersons (Bass, 1960). It is likely that the perceived ability, value, and popularity of leaders would correlate with the extent they exerted transformational leadership. In the same way, transformational behavior is usually seen as more desirable than transactional behavior and is reflected in MLQ items. When a forced choice version of the MLQ (Form 8X) was compared with a regular listing of items (Form 8Y), the transformational mean scores were deflated. Again, correction for social desirability of the items is needed.
Contingent Reward: Both Transactional and Transformational. Among the transactional factors, as noted earlier, contingent reward empirically forms two factors. It is partly transformational when it concerns psychological reward and is intrinsically valued by the follower. Contingent reward is transactional when it is material in nature and extrinsically valued. The pruning of management by exception by the shortening of its original 10 items to create active and passive factors (Hater & Bass, 1987) was psychometrically acceptable in the six-factor models of Tejeda and Scandura (1997) and Avolio, Bass, and Dong (1999). Nevertheless, the scales need enlarging for practical purposes.
Need for More Experimentation. Brown and Lord (1999) argue that the study of the new leadership has been too dependent on survey and field studies. There has not been a comparable amount of study invested in experimental studies. For instance, we are often not cognizant of nonverbal behaviors, as they are processed too quickly. Brown and Lord cited a study by Awamleh and Gardner (1999), noted before, in which it was concluded, on the basis of a controlled experiment, that only 3% of the perceived charisma of a visionary message was due to its content and 40% to 58% was due to its style of delivery. Brown and Lord also argued that since transformational leadership involves followers’ strong emotional attachment, its antecedents may occur too rapidly and outside of conscious awareness to be reported in a survey. To reliably capture the effect requires controlled experiments.
Transformational leadership builds on transactional leadership. Leaders have a profile of how frequently they are transformational and how frequently they are transactional. Many active leaders may be high in both. Others may be high in one and low in the other. Less active leaders may be low in both. Considerable evidence has accumulated on the greater effectiveness of transformational leadership of political leaders, public officials, nonprofit agency leaders, religious leaders, educators, military officers, business managers, and health care directors.
Inspirational leadership does not depend on personal identification processes. Rather, the mutual goals of leaders and followers are identified and encouraged by the leader. Inspirational leadership stems from the management of meaning and impression management. The inspirational leader builds followers’ expectations by envisioning a mutually describable future and articulating how to attain it. Leaders can use many intellectually stimulating ways to move followers out of their conceptual ruts. Intellectual stimulation, charismatic leadership, and inspirational leadership are major components of transformational leadership, which adds to transactional leadership in generating positive outcomes in the groups and organizations led. But above and beyond this, understanding the effects of such leadership requires examining the situation further.