Transformational Leadership

Transformational Leadership Abstracts 1

The purpose and intent of the study used in this paper addressed gaining a better understanding of the reasons why followers of a transformational leader exhibit increased motivation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance. The authors tested one of the most fundamental notions underlying transformational leadership theory and the self-concept-based theory—that followers of transformational leaders find their work more meaningful and thus, are more self-engaged (Bono & Judge, 2003). The hypotheses and key concepts for this study were: 1) Transformational leadership behaviors and followers’ tendencies to view their work as self-concordant are positively associated. 2) Self-concordance partially mediates the relationship between leader behaviors and follower attitudes (satisfaction with job and leader, and organizational commitment). 3) Self-concordance partially mediates the relationship between leader behaviors and follower work performance (Bono & Judge, 2003).

Methodology

Bono & Judge (2003) states that the research design was structured to extend the self-concept-based theory by linking some elements of the theory with the self-concordance model, motivational theory that links internal self-regulation, goal-directed effort, and goal attainment.

The population sample consisted of “247 individuals (leaders) holding supervisory or managerial positions within a participating organization and 954 individuals who reported directly to them (Bono & Judge, 2003).” The leaders studied held positions ranging from upper level manager to entry-level supervisor, such as a team leader with the mode of followers being four followers per leader. Data was collected over the Internet with leaders identifying their followers from a company list with 6 followers randomly selected (by an algorithm built into the Web site) for inclusion in the study and if there were fewer than 6 followers, all followers were...