Transactional Vs Transformational Leadership: Which Essay Is Superior?

Write an essay which gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your individual understanding of one aspect of organizational behaviour theory and practice.

1. Are transformational leaders superior to transactional leaders? Use examples to support your answer.
2. Why do people resist change? What options are available to a change agent to reduce resistance to change, and is this always a good idea?
3. How might you attempt to develop a strong corporate culture? What are the practical challenges of managing culture in organisations?

Transactional Leadership

Leadership is the action of leading the group of people in an organisation. Leadership is a practical skill of an individual to guide the others. Leader performs the many function in the organisation at the centre of group’s power structure (Fairhurst, and Connaughton, 2014). The leader is in a position to shape, regulate and change the attitude of his group members. The leaders and his followers play the roles expected of them and that justify their respective positions. There is different leadership style which is use by the person to lead the other people. The most appropriate leadership style based on the functions of the leader. Leadership style of the leaders is change as per the situation. There are some situations in which the leader has to take the advice from the team members but sometimes the leaders has to take the decision in order to immediate solutions without consulting the others. There are different leadership styles which help to lead the organisation and the other people such as transformational, transactional, autocratic, democratic and many others (Holten, and Brenner, 2015). This report will talk about the transactional and transformational leadership. The statement is correct that the transformational leadership is more superior to the transactional leadership. In this report, the discussion is made on this statement.

Transactional leadership is the part of leadership that focuses on the supervision, organisation and performance. In this style of leadership, leader promotes the team through rewards and promotions in order to achieve the objective or to perform the performance. It is observed that the leader motivates the team through rewards and punishment system for the short-term period (McCleskey, 2014). Transactional approach is used for the short term purposes because it cannot able to motivate the teams for long time because rewards and promotions look same after a certain period of time. Leaders using transactional leadership to pay attention on the team members work in order to find faults and deviations to improve the quality and procedure. Transactional leader always provide something in return of the performance of the team. There are many numbers of things which can be provided by the leader in return of the good performance such as promotions, new responsibilities, desired change in duties, performance incentives and many others. It was founded that the technique is using by the leader to provide the rewards is correct to motivate the employees in order to improve their performance. Transactional leader sometimes display the behaviours and traits that can be quite effective in many organisations during the motivated players. This leadership style is kind of bribes due to which the team members perform their work in order to achieve the rewards (Delegach, Kark, Katz-Navon, and Van Dijk, 2017).  The leadership style is converted into deal in which the motivation can be considered as beneficial for the organisation. There are many issues in which the team does not willing to work in that environment. But the transactional leadership encourage the team to work with the existing system and negotiations to attain the goals of the team. It is difficult to set the rewards for the every member of the team. The feeling of biasness is incurred in the team due to different rewards criteria set by the leader. This type of leadership style is based on the behaviour in order to set the criteria of rewarding the followers and maintaining the status. The leader should be honest and take the fair decision for the each and every members of a team. The transactional leader focuses on the strategies, objectives and operation goals that is necessary to achieve. Transactional leader take the decision and set the rewards as per the performance and responsibility of the member. Transaction leadership style helps the leader to achieve the objective. Transactional leadership style is also beneficial for the leader in order to resolve the existing problem of the members (Deichmann, and Stam, 2015).

Transformational Leadership

The transactional leadership is also known as managerial leader. As per the other perspective, a transactional leader is someone who value orders and structure. Transactional leadership are likely to command and manage the large corporations or handle the international projects by supervising the team. The leader develops the rules and regulation in order to achieve the objective on time. Transactional leaders placed in those areas where the people are self-motivated and who work well in structured and directed environment.

(Source: Techtarget, 2018)

For example- Ma yun is an example of transactional leader who is known as executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. He is also the co-founder of the Alibaba Group. The company has little or nothing to show in terms of research, development and innovation. The nature of business is growing continuously with the growing demand of buyers. Ma Yun supervises the employees and handles the whole organisation in order to attain the objective of the company. Ma Yun is a correct example of transactional leader because he also motivates the employees by providing the rewards and also he plays the role of managerial leadership (Kabeyi, 2018).

Transformational leader is a person who motivates the members to achieve the extra ordinary outcomes. The leader should pay the attention to the concern and development needs of individuals. The leader spread awareness to the members to look at the problems in a new way and find their solutions (Yaslioglu, and Erden, 2018).  The awareness of old problems helps the members to perform their task in a perfect manner and achieve the extra ordinary outcomes. Transformational leaders encourage the members to put their efforts to achieve the goal of the group. The leader uses their knowledge, expertise and change the vision as per the capability of the members’ capacity. Transformational leadership is the most valuable form of leadership because team members have the chance to change and improve their performance by give their best in the job. It can be said that the organisation achieves the best outcomes when the transformation leadership is follows by the leaders. The transformational leadership attempt and succeed for the long time even after exist the position. The transformational leader is beneficial in order to gain the high revenue and outcomes (Birasnav, 2014).

Transformational leader gives the autonomy to the members so that the skills of members will develop. The developed skills members find their own new ways to solve the problems in the right manner. Transformational leadership also gives the authority after the training to the members so that they can take their own decisions. Providing the authority develops the skills of the members in order to find the better ways of achieving the goals (Engelen, Gupta, Strenger, and Brettel, 2015). The leader has the responsibility to inspire the people, intellectual stimulation, idealised influence, and individualised consideration.

(Source: Future of working, 2018)

For example- Steve Jobs is the best example of transformational leadership. Steve Jobs is the most iconic transformational leader in the world. The passion for perfection and simplicity and sophistication drove the company and he always ensure that the every employee is worked at Apple put their full efforts. Steve job has the responsibility to think beyond the limits in order to gain the extra ordinary outcome. It is founded that the company create the product that the world did not even think about it. (Kark, Van Dijk, and Vashdi, 2018)

Transactional vs Transformational Leadership

The transactional and transformational leadership are different from each other’s. The transactional leadership style is always providing the rewards to motivate the members in order to attain the objective. But the transformational leadership style inspires the members to gain the extra ordinary outcomes. The transactional leadership style is reactive in nature but the transformational leadership style is proactive. In the transactional leadership is the only one leader in the group but the transformational leadership has more than one leader in the group. It has been seen that the transactional leadership focuses on the planning and execution so that members follows it and achieve their targets. But the transformational leadership focuses on the innovation due to which members is capable to solve their own problems and attain their extra benefits. The transactional leader attracts the members so that they can put their efforts to keep their own self-interest in the first place. But in the transformational leadership the people put their efforts for the group instead of self-interest. The leader set the rewards criteria on the basis of the performance and position of the members without any biasness. In the transactional leadership, the leader has to take care about their behaviour with the others because the relations of leaders with the members are necessary. In the transformational leadership, the leader is focuses on the values, morals, ideals and needs of the members which are the main component and stay for long-time with the members. The transactional leader works for developing the existing organisational culture but the transformational leader works for the changing the existing the organisational culture so that the members think beyond the limits (Tyssen, Wald, and Spieth, 2014). It is observed that the transactional leadership is more suitable for the settled environment as compare to the turbulent environment. Turbulent environment is that in which the change are unexpected and unpredictable. Transformational leader inspires the members for the innovation and provides them authority to take their decision due to which they can easily handle the unpredictable situations. Transactional leader is not suitable for the settled environment because in this style of leadership; leader will develop the rules and regulation which is compulsory to follow by the followers. As per the differences, the transactional leadership is more superior as compare to the transformational leadership (Tannenbaum, and Schmidt, 2017).

It has been evaluated that the transformational leadership is more superior to the transactional leadership. There are many points which state that the transformational leadership is more suitable for the transactional leadership style. Moral and values are the one of the main factors which states that the transactional leadership is always stay with the members for long time and more beneficial. Transactional leadership is mainly focuses on the moral and values which always stay with the members but the transactional leadership encourage them with the rewards. It is a fact that the moral and values are the basic values which followers has to be followed in order to get the best result. It is observed that the moral and values is more beneficial for the society as well as the organisation (Tepper, et al., 2018). As per the ethics and moral values the whole work has been done by the team with the proper manner which is beneficial in order to attain the extraordinary output. The transformational leadership promotes the enthusiasm which is another factor which defines the transformational leader more superiors to transactional leadership. This approach of transactional leadership is create an enthusiastic work environment due to which the environment will change and innovative. The enthusiastic environment will develops the skills of the employees and promote them to create the innovative product which is beyond the thinking of the world. As the individuals are working through self-motivation, this approach would mainly focuses on higher level of efficiency and output. Self-motivation is a component which helps to attain the higher level of efficiency (Renko, El Tarabishy, Carsrud, and Brännback, 2015).

Examples of Transactional and Transformational Leadership

Turbulent environment is the factor which states that the transactional leadership is not more suitable for the every type of environment. It is founded that the environment is change with the passes of time and it is not necessary that the nature of the environment will remain same. The ups-and downs are always comes in the environment and this would always be unpredictable. Transactional leadership only plays the role to encourage the employees by setting the reward criteria. It also develops the rules and regulation which has to be follow by the members of the team and it is difficult to change the rules and regulation at that time. Thus, the transactional leadership is not suitable for that turbulent environment but it is observed that the transformational leadership is suitable. Transformational leader gives the opportunity to the members to take their down decision and solve their own problems with their skills (Qu, Janssen, and Shi, 2015).

As the members has the authority to take the decision for the group interest. It is a fact that if the each and every member takes the decision for the group interest than the team gets the high outcomes beyond the objective. The transactional leadership encourage the members for the self-interest which is beneficial for the members but not for the whole group. It has been seen that the self-interest of the members can only attain the objective of the team not beyond the limits due to lack of innovation. This leadership styles has its ability to quickly asses the current situation of the team performance and quickly formulate the vision for its improvement and growth. Transformational leader provide the rights to the members as per their position due to which the leader communicate their visions properly to the other leaders as well as the members. It is beneficial for the leader because the different ideas of the members help to find the techniques to attain the objective and even beyond the objective. The transactional leadership approach helps the employees to deal with the challenging situation with the big pictures of objective (Popli, and Rizvi, 2015).

From the above limelight discussion, it has been concluded that the transformational leadership is more superior to transactional leadership. However, both the approaches are used for the leadership but transformational leadership is more suitable as per its nature. The nature of transformational leadership is defined with the features and qualities such as inspiring, stimulation, influence and motivation. As the members has to follow the rules and regulation in the transactional leadership to achieve the objective they getting distracted in a very short period of time. But in transformational leadership style, the members have the autonomy to take their own decision and handle the situation by their own. The skills of the members will develop in the transformational leadership approach (Yaslioglu, and Erden, 2018). As per the transformational leadership, the members attain the extra ordinary outcomes beyond the objective but in the transactional leadership there is less chance to achieve the extra ordinary outcomes. Although, the transactional leadership is good for the society as well as the organisation but suitable for the stable environment but the transformational leadership is suitable for the every type of environment. Thus, the transformational leadership is beneficial than the transactional leadership.

References

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Deichmann, D. and Stam, D. (2015) Leveraging transformational and transactional leadership to cultivate the generation of organization-focused ideas. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(2), pp.204-219.

Delegach, M., Kark, R., Katz-Navon, T. and Van Dijk, D. (2017) A focus on commitment: the roles of transformational and transactional leadership and self-regulatory focus in fostering organizational and safety commitment. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 26(5), pp.724-740.

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Tannenbaum, R. and Schmidt, W.H. (2017) How to choose a leadership pattern. In Leadership Perspectives (pp. 75-84). Routledge.

Tepper, B.J., Dimotakis, N., Lambert, L.S., Koopman, J., Matta, F.K., Man Park, H. and Goo, W. (2018) Examining Follower Responses to Transformational Leadership from a Dynamic, Person–Environment Fit Perspective. Academy of Management Journal, 61(4), pp.1343-1368.

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