Transformational and Transactional Leadership

897 Words2 Pages

Certainly, an army would not be able to battle in the war without a commander who in charges of the whole strategy. Correspondingly, any organisations cannot function without leaders. Leader is the most substantial element of successful organizations. Becoming outstanding leaders, leadership skill is vital in order to drive the organizations forward. Several leadership principles are extensively used these days. Burns (1978) identified two types of leadership comprise of transactional and transformational leadership. Hence, leaders should be capable to indicate which theory should be applied in accordance with organization’s culture and objectives. This essay aims to evaluate the resemblances and the differences between transactional and transformational leadership as well as the feasibility to utilize a mixture of them by giving the definitions and examples followed by the supporting researches and studies. Initially, transactional and transformational leadership are different in terms of implementation and its outcomes. However, transformational leadership was developed from transactional leadership (Downton, 1973). Bass (1985) defined transactional leadership as an exchange activity that leaders execute to motivate subordinates in order to achieve their tasks by giving out reward or punishment correspond with their performance. Additionally, active and passive management by exception are taken into account when it comes to misconception and faults. Bass (1985) stated that transformational leadership emphasizes the value of subordinates, encourages them to perform extra effort, and assures their comprehension on organization’s goals and objectives. Besides, idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulatio... ... middle of paper ... ...) has shown that these two typologies work well in different frameworks, transformational leadership involves in procedural justice whereas distributive justice relies on transactional leadership. An association of both would maximize the level of trust on leaders. In conclusion, transactional and transformational leadership can be merged or used individually depending on various circumstances. However, they are partially correlated. In order to make the best use and get the desirable results out of these principles, leaders should attain a deep understanding of each theory as they are dissimilar in conducting. Moreover, an appropriate balance should be considered if leaders aim to integrate them together. In my point of view, either stand alone or combination usage would benefit to any organizations if the application of leaders was taken in proper situations.

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