Transformational Leadership Theoretical Perspective - Literature review Example

Theory Development: Transformational Leadership Theoretical Perspective  Name Institution Introduction Modern educational institutions encounter a lot of change which is partially coped with through adjustments in leadership strategy, hence the popularity of transformational leadership (Eacott, 2008). Transformational leadership involves a greater focus on the needs and concerns of staff, with the intention of developing them into semi-autonomous entities which can work without requiring constant direction by improving the quality of relationships between leaders and staff (Franciosi, 2012). One major feature of ideal transformational leadership is open-mindedness, a feature which enables them to aggregate information and knowledge so as to arrive at the best decisions hence knowledge (Lang, 2011). This paper proposes a new theoretical perspective that addresses the link between transformational leadership and organizational knowledge as relates to school leadership, suggesting that the open-minded nature of transformational leadership acts as a mediating factor. The Significance of Institutional Leadership The success of a school success has a close correlation with its kind of administration. According to Kurland et al. (2010), the leadership, in this case administrators who oversee teachers are generally responsible for the kind of teaching that is delivered by instructors, and extent of learning attained by students. The impact of school leadership is however mostly indirect. This is because leaders determine learning through helping to facilitate a vision which guides and ensures that the learning process within the institution will enable teachers to share learning routinely with others, in the process improving their teaching abilities. Kurland et al. (2010) adds that the vision is an essential component of leadership because it gives rise to a sense of purpose which will eventually unite the teachers and motivate them to seek their deepest ambitions, aspirations and goals. The leadership process starts out from the idea of creative tension. According to Kurland et al. (2010), creative tension arises from getting a clearer picture of where individuals want to be, their vision and a true revelation of where they currently are, otherwise referred to as the “current reality.” Whatever gap existing between the two produces a natural tension. In the absence of a vision, there cannot be creative tension. Lang (2011) explains that within the context of creative tension, the energy that eventually propels change and performance comes from the people’s vision or what they seek to create in place of the current reality. The motivation behind creative tension is intrinsic, so that the distinction arising creates the difference between generative and adaptive learning. The vision is central and essential within leadership theory and the promotion of organizational learning. Transformational Leadership and its Impact As from the 1970’s, there has been a lot of attention paid to the effectiveness and overall idea of transformational leadership in western countries (Franciosi, 2012). According to Suresh & Rajini (2013), the concept of transformational leadership is traceable to a 1978 publication by James McGregor Burns in which he focused on their ability to engage employees in measures that would inspire them to achieve greater moral purpose, commitment and energy levels. He argued that such commitment and energy towards pursuit of the vision leads to transformation of organizations through development of institutional capacity for collaborative working that ensures overcoming of challenges and attainment of ambitious goals. Covey (2007) explains that the original theory put forwards by Burns was added upon by other subsequent scholars who later came up with survey instruments that would henceforth measure transformational leadership. Since then, variations of the instruments have been applied in different studies on transformational leadership within the educational sector. The transformational leader serves three main functions. According to Balyer (2012), he serves other people’s needs in a sincere manner, empowering and inspiring them to seek more success. Secondly, a he charismatically leads, sets a vision and ensures confidence, pride and trust while working with teams. Third, he offers intellectual stimulation which in turn offers team members a chance to exploit their potentials to the maximum. In this case, an educational institution will end up being less bureaucratic while functioning as a transforming agent. Rather than empowering certain individuals, it ends up collectively empowered as a unit Transformational leadership therefore basically motivates people, and this effect spreads through the response of individuals to their leader, depending to a large extent on their perception about the leader. According to Franciosi (2012), there are therefore psychological processes that determine how effective transformational leadership becomes. It addresses individual needs, ethical role-modelling, motivation and willingness to take risk. According to Bass & Steidlmeier (1999), teachers will for instance identify with the aspirations of their charismatic leader and seek to emulate them. Transformational leadership offers a realistic and reasonable conceptualization of the self, one which is closely linked with family, friend and community welfare which may be more important than the leader’s own. According to Grigore (2013), the leader’s moral obligation to the others is based on a broader understanding of individuals, their cultural beliefs and social norms. A transformational leadership is not focused on punishments but is rather consistent with spiritual beliefs that usually assume that the community is very trusting and acts as the central context of life. It is however not possible to coerce behavior and any search for truth should never be stifled. Ethical behavioral ideals and norms cannot be imposed and are instead freely embraced. Motivation on its part is produced by inner commitment. Creativity and questioning are encouraged and followers come up as ends rather than the means towards satisfying the leader’s ends. In summary, a transformational leader is morally uplifting and is concerned with everyone’s common good so that a personalized leader who seeks self-interest cannot be transformational. According to Lee (2012), the idea of a transformational leader is however often criticized on ethical grounds. Transformational leadership is generally more productive, effective, satisfying and innovative to the subjects. However, it may be criticized in that it exposes subjects to amoral flattery because it utilizes impression management and also manipulates them to past self-interest for the sake of the institution. Transformational Leadership in the Teaching Context A transformational leader, for instance a principal will seek the development of the institution’s innovative capacity. Hallinger (2003) explains that instead of just focusing on direct control, supervision and coordination of instruction and curricula, it tries to build institutional capacity for selecting its purpose and supports changes in learning and teaching practices towards this. Transformational leadership is a distributed feature because it focuses on development of a shared vision and commitment to change in the school. Within a school, the transformational principal or other supervisor will be more of a coach and mentor to the teaching team so that it can unite productively in doing their work, while at the same time focusing on the needs of individuals. Through providing everyone with a chance to seek their options in career development for instance through internships, training and conferences, subjects are able to develop their knowledge, expertise and skills. Bass & Riggio (2006) believe that this is helpful in ensuring that the organization is able to transform and transition into a new form. In this view, through maintenance of commitment to team diversity it is ensured that individual differences do not become a cause of disunity, but rather an accepted feature. In case however the leader fails in striking a balance between individual preferences and group needs, there is the danger of overemphasizing the contributions and needs of a select group or member, which will be counterproductive. Transformational Leadership’s Effect on Knowledge Creation The new perspective’s first proposition is that transformational leadership promotes creation of organizational knowledge. In this view, the production of organizational knowledge may be understood as the activities and initiatives that the school undertakes so as to ensure that there is the generation of ideas, knowledge and objectives by its staff. Organizational knowledge is an outcome arising from positive changes in subjective knowing. According to Bass & Riggio (2006), it has to be separate from existing knowledge that typically provides the conceptual outline of knowledge creation. It involves production of value-adding ideas. Saleh & Khine (2014) suggest that organizational knowledge arises from a process of knowledge creation in which there is production of new ideas which imply an enrichment or elaboration of existing knowledge. Organizational knowledge plays a significant role in ensuring greater competitive advantage for the organization. The generation of new knowledge usually leads complex social capabilities for any organization, and these lead to improved competitive advantage. According to Tan et al. (2014), when an organization succeeds in ensuring it, effectiveness and efficiency in operations is ensured. Leadership contributes greatly to the generation of knowledge within organizations, especially considering that a school is essentially a distributed knowledge system. The implication of this is that within a school system, there is a lot of knowledge contained in every sort of social interaction and relationships that exist within it. While at work, learning is produced through assimilating bits of knowledge that were initially unrelated as a result of which ideas come up and are put together into an integrated system of knowledge. Transformational leadership has an impact on the ways in which the organization’s members interpret, embrace or ensure knowledge creation. Judge & Bono (2000) explain that transformational leadership is made up of four components. These include idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. According to Balyer (2012), idealised influence refers to the extent to which a leader acts charismatically in facilitating his or her subjects’ psychological identification with and emotional attachment to them. Inspirational motivation on its part refers to the extent to which a leader is able to articulate a convincing mission and vision that draws the attention and commitment of subjects. Intellectual stimulation is the extent to which a leader is able to challenge the current ways in which things are understood and handled and instead stimulates innovative and new ideas that can help in solving the problems. Individualized consideration is the extent to which the leader offers encouragement, personal attention, and self-development of subjects. The transformational institutional leader has the ability of promoting social identification among the subjects. According to Shelley et al. (2004), this is achieved through articulation of the vision that will explain the value and significance of teams. Dealing with social categorization for instance has a confirmed ability of raising the degree of employee commitment to the pursuit of stated missions and visions as relates to the creation of knowledge. This is due to the fact that social categorization has a close relationship with conflict, distrust and failure to open up with information in teams. When the transformational leader manages to articulate a believable and effective vision relating to organizational knowledge creation, he or she will have the ability of boosting the perception of teachers into a unified perspective. When this happens, there is the likelihood of a reduced effect of personal stereotypes, individual differences and subjective biases. Subjects of the leader will appreciate the value of individual differences more and consider the skills, abilities, experiences, knowledge and skills of others as precious due to their potential contribution to a greater knowledge creation process within the institution. From the discussion, transformational leadership is likely to facilitate an effective organizational knowledge creation process. This happens in a number of ways. First, in case a leader shows his subordinates that he is confident in their abilities and capabilities, especially the energy they devote to organizational knowledge, the subordinates will definitely experience a boost in their self-esteem. When a leader uplifts his subjects emotionally, the effect will be comfort and encouragement. They will therefore be more motivated to seek knowledge development that will boost institutional effectiveness even more. Secondly, a transformational leader will stimulate his subjects intellectually and this can change the pattern of knowledge creation within the organization. The leader will end up encouraging more creative thought patterns among the juniors who will actively try to find newer approaches solution of problems. A transformational leader will issue his followers a lot of constructive feedback while also setting an example of how they should be thinking. Tan et al. (2014) explain that when this happens, the leader’s subordinates will be able to get over mental constraints that usually set limits to the kind of knowledge generated as everyone develops ideas which they believe will be accepted by their teams. When leadership is transformational as earlier noted, the subjects are more intellectually stimulated, which in turn leads to better interpretation of information hence easier reconciliation of ideas generated within teams that may even have highly divergent individuals. Third, organizational knowledge arises within a context of serious outlining, analysis and integration of intellectual input. However, this does not come without obstacles. According to Saleh & Khine (2014), knowledge integration and sharing has to cope with challenges, mainly arising from absence of trust or appropriate interpersonal relations. Transformational leadership helps in such instances because it facilitates improvement of such relations. This is because there is promotion of trust, concern and mutual respect in a transformational leadership setting. In seeking transformational leadership and the knowledge creation that arises however, there may be negatives. For instance, according to Hawkins (2011), a leader might apply his charisma to become a role model for everyone else around him. As an admired and respected person, he will show all juniors the best way of energetically approaching tasks that they are given. He will accept the taking of risk as a necessity in seeking shared objectives. However, if such risk-taking is too much, then the effect is likely to be disruptive to the daily functioning of the entire organization. If such a leader also acts unethically or immorally, the entire system will face challenges. Open-Mindedness in Transformational Leadership The suggested theoretical perspective indicates the role of open-mindedness as a mediator in the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational knowledge. There is the assumption that transformational leadership has a close connection with open-minded leadership. This is founded on the suggestion by Hawkins (2011) according to whom a transformational leader stimulates subjects intellectually. They therefore end up questioning the status quo and existent assumptions. This is in addition to the valuing of everyone’s ideas. A leader whose intellect is stimulated at all times will want to find new alternative approaches to the performance of tasks, as long as these will improve the subjects’ perceptions of everything considered to be a positive value, open-mindedness being one of these. When everyone is free to question and challenge traditional approaches, they will tend to end up taking up acceptance of open expression of ideas which will be appropriately valued and finally integrated in solutions that will be formulated. An open-minded leader focuses more on the empowerment of juniors through listening to and response to their issues, ideas, approaches and ways of thinking in relation to their work (Shields, 2012). This implies that he will keep his door open always to the staff and even though in charge of everything, will always make decisions after carefully examining his own ideas as contrasted to those of other people. Open-minded leadership establishes participative decision-making where everyone takes up an active role in determining progress of the organization. According to Bass & Riggio (2006), there will be a lot of flexibility on the leader’s part, so that he can always adjust to accommodate and do whatever will benefit the organization in general. The leader will attentively listen to everyone, offer thoughtful feedback, take up innovativeness and factor in various opinions that will enable reasonability in arrival at final decisions. Because of this, courage is necessary because it marks a great change from the traditional approach to leadership. Decisions arrived at while open minded imply change hence risk. Open-mindedness ensures continuous learning. According to Bratianu (2015), all employees are empowered when their opinions and creativity are respected. This leads to the inspiration of employees who end up loyally and willingly following the leader even during trying times for the organization. Suresh & Rajini (2013) explain that flexible leadership ensures the application of new methods and ways of thinking. As a result, the school benefits because a variety of approaches are used in resolving challenges. An open-minded leadership is able to promote knowledge creation and acquisition within the organization. This is because whatever happens at the leadership level goes down to the employees. When the leader is flexible or humble, he sets an example for the others. Hawkins (2011) adds that flexibility and humility are valuable attributes, but this has to be regulated. For instance, it would not be productive to have a leader who is always seeking to please everyone, as this can limit their ability to arrive at a decision. A mind which is fully closed or fully open will not be the best for leadership. Knowledge creation stands to benefit a lot from open-mindedness. This is because first, it enables listening. Anyone who listens ends up learning more things. In the course of listening also, the listener passes the message to those who are talking that he or she cares about and values their opinions. According to Bratianu (2015), this encourages them to share more of their experiences and insights. An open mind also enables the changing of one’s mind and decisions. This is useful because it enables the changing of viewpoints whenever there is a corresponding change of events or circumstances so that everything remains relevant. When open-mindedness is accepted as symbolic and inspirational, the leader becomes better able to influence others to embrace it as an ideal as subjects also find a link between their individual interests and the virtue (Hawkins, 2011). Subjects will therefore end up having a motivation to change their behavior and attitudes with respect to having open minds. When a leader embraces a lot of mentoring and coaching as is usually the case in transformational leadership, subjects also tend to take up a stronger team orientation (Bratianu, 2015). This implies that when a leader shows individualized attention to employees, then they will value teams more and react more favourably to motivational aspects within the workplace. Open-minded leadership accommodates the subjects’ freedom to say anything that may not be in line with the expected (Hawkins, 2011). According to Sosik (2006), it also gives a lot of recognition to others people’s knowledge. When an open-minded leadership is in place, subjects are reassured that they are a strong team that cannot afford to have individuals working separately. This is because the leadership ideals have a direct effect on the expectations and interpretations of leadership. Such expectations have an effect on how workers approach organizational knowledge creation as they work within their respective teams. When a leader is transformational, he ends up using his flexibility and open-mindedness to inspire and guide his subjects. From the discussion, there should be a link between knowledge creation and open-minded leadership. According to Lang (2011), an open-minded leadership and therefore team will affect knowledge creation as its features will contribute to the understanding, acceptance and consideration of ideas that are acquired from everyone else, and these will be applied in creation of new knowledge. An open-minded environment will offer a social background that will guide the teams’ behavior and beliefs so that they remain in line with its practices. Everyone will therefore be willing to say what they think and come up with new thought patterns that will raise the possibility of knowledge being created within teams. There are however limits to the openness of one’s mind. One is when the decision violates organizational core values. Sosik (2006) explains that in case the knowledge shared suggests a compromise of quality or dishonesty in operations, then it has to be ruled out, as flexibility should never extend to this level. If the leader is too much swayed by new knowledge from contributors who have different inputs just because they seem to make sense, then the flexibility is too much and has to be checked. Lastly, whenever a decision’s short-term impact is applicable but likely to produce a negative long-term impact, then flexibility should not prevail. For instance, if the leader fails to offer feedback to an employee who is straying, it may appear easy and not costly. However, such a move may have a long-lasting negative effect on a team, the leader and the organization in general. Open-Mindedness’ Mediating Role in Knowledge Creation The approach proposes that a positive relationship between an open-minded leadership environment and organizational knowledge creation. According to Grigore (2013), there is need for open-minded and open-hearted leadership. This implies self-control and self-knowledge, and work teams demand more transparency, authenticity and integrity, so that they can trust leaders and be trusted by leaders in return. An open-minded leader will be a useful facilitator of collaborative interactions among his subjects even where there is a high likelihood of conflicts. When everyone takes up the ideal, there will be a greater amount of information because workers tend to be more curious to find out more about alternative ideas and unusual circumstances. It is therefore possible to conclude that when everyone has an open mind, there is a greater possibility of them listening to and considering ideas that are against what they were prepared to find hence attempt to understand such even more. There will subsequently be more discussion, communication and contribution of strategic ideas. People get to put across varied views and exchange ideas as they will be ready to debate on issues without much defensiveness. Lang (2011) explains that when team members apply a lot of opposing and alternative ideas to problem resolution they end up having a greater capacity to avoid the urge to conform, become more divergent in their thoughts and are more able to apply different viewpoints into a single codified kind of knowledge. These aspects all positively contribute to organizational knowledge creation. From the discussion do far, open-mindedness will be an intervening factor in the relationship between transformation leadership and creation of knowledge. According to Bratianu (2015), the perceptions of team members in such circumstances will help ensure that everyone contributes what they can, as long as they are free to express what they think and can well understand and apply the best ideas that they gather from colleagues. Judge and Bono (2000) indicate that leadership in this way makes it possible for charisma to be exhibited, intellectual development to be facilitated and individual attention to be placed on the individual needs of team members, and this in turn leads to greater effectiveness of organizational knowledge creation. The behavior of a transformational leadership reinforce open-mindedness that affect the experiences and perceptions of individuals with regard to why knowledge needs to be created and what sort of behavior will assist in such creation. According to Sosik (2006), an open-minded organizational culture brings about a collective contribution and shared belief on what everyone in the organization should be doing so that knowledge creation can be achieved. When a transformational leader makes it normal for everyone to be open-minded, he or she increases the possibility of knowledge creation being achieved within his teams. In these circumstances, team members will be able to give diverse and different suggestions while actively debating and putting into practice the best courses of action for the sake of creating knowledge. Because of the discussions and sharing of perspectives, there will be knowledge creation. The Theoretical Perspective Basing on the discussed issues, the new theoretical perspective states that transformational leadership correlates positively with organizational knowledge, subject to the leadership being open-minded enough. Here, the independent variable is transformational leadership, while the dependent variable is organizational knowledge with the intervening variable being the leadership’s open-mindedness. As an independent variable, transformational leadership relates to organizational knowledge. The intervening variable, here being open-mindedness has a relationship with the dependent variable, namely organizational knowledge. A Critique of the Perspective The new approach successfully suggests that open-minded leadership will always act as a mediator between the kind of leadership adopted and creation of organizational knowledge. This is because effectiveness in creation of knowledge will rely on how best a leader promotes an open-minded environment. Once it becomes the day to day routine, a transformational leader will possibly support it further by setting an example of the behaviours that uphold open-mindedness. Subjects will eventually fully embrace it as their cultural basis for interacting with team members and also other teams. The theoretical approach may however be pointed out as having two main limitations. First, the relationships in it have just been deduced from discussion and not tested. There is no empirical evidence provided to back the role of open-minded settings on organizational knowledge and leadership. The inability to test variables implies that whatever is suggested cannot be conclusive. In addition, many other variables could possibly be included. While not really in the scope of this perspective, it would be wise to be included in other similar investigations. Second, although the model establishes relationships, there may be many other factors that affect the situation but have not been included. For example, according to Horsford (2010), there are aspects such as satisfaction, personal identification and trust which also usually positively influence the effectiveness of leadership in general. The personal identification of employees with leaders and social identification with their teams affect their perception and reaction to transformational leadership. If they are willing to trust the leader also, there will be an effect on the attitude of such individuals towards the outcomes of such leadership. Conclusion Transformational leadership is one of the tools used in ensuring adaptation to changing times within the education sector. It emphasizes motivation, innovation and open-mindedness, which in turn promote collaboration and therefore productivity. There is therefore a close relation between transformational leadership and organizational knowledge creation because there is the bringing together of previously unconnected information to establish a new body of knowledge within teams. Open-mindedness is on its part one of the characteristics of the leadership approach and makes it easy for everyone to accommodate each other’s contributions hence a greater diversity and richness in information generated. The theoretical perspective that has been suggested offers an explanation of knowledge creation, particularly the role that transformational leadership plays in the process. It also offers an insight into the role played by an open-minded team environment on knowledge creation and transformational leadership. References Balyer, A. (2012). Transformational Leadership Behaviors of School Principals: A Qualitative Research Based on Teachers’ Perceptions. International Online Journal of Educational Sciences, 4 (3): 581-591 Bass, B and Riggio, R. (2006). Transformational Leadership. London: Dover Bass, B and Steidlmeier, P. (1999). Ethics, Character, and Authentic Transformational Leadership behavior. Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 181–217 Bratianu, C. (2015). Organizational Knowledge Dynamics: Managing Knowledge Creation, Acquisition, Sharing, and Transformation. Hershey: Information Science Reference Covey, S. (2007). The Transformational Leadership Report. Retrieved on 26 May 27, 2015 from Eacott, S. (2008). Strategy in Educational Leadership: in Search of Unity. Journal of Educational Administration. Vol. 46 (3): 353-375 Franciosi, S. (2012). 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