The nature, differences and implications for management of transactional and transformational theories of leadership.
Assignment 1 - Business Organisation
Q: The nature, differences and implications for management of transactional and transformational theories of leadership.
Kuhnert and Lewis developed transactional and transformational theories of leadership in 1987. They believed that both demanded different skills. Transactional theories include the allocation of work, making routine decisions along with monitoring performance and interacting with other functions within the organisation. On the other hand, transformational theories are about having the skills and personal qualities to be able to recognise the need for change and being able to identify appropriate courses of action.
The first leadership theory I will study here will be House and Mitchell's Path Goal Leadership Theory. The Path Goal theory essentially represents an application of expectancy theory of motivation. The theory believes that the leaders are a very important source of motivation provided their behaviour can enhance desirability of good performance in the eyes of their subordinates.
The nature of the Path Goal Theory is such that it contains four main areas. These areas include the behaviour of their leaders and the outcomes they produce along with contingency factors based on the subordinates and the environment. If we where to analyse the environmental contingency factors we would see that they in turn branch into a further three areas. These are the task structure, a formal authority system and finally a work group. The task structure states out what task is to be performed and how it is to be structured and the formal authority system details the interpersonal roles such as liasing with leaders and figureheads, informational roles such as monitoring subordinates or being a spokesperson. Finally the formal authority system spots out the decisional roles such as those that an entrepreneur would carry out or possibly a negotiator. After environmental issues we then would move on to subordinate contingency factors. These are based upon the core attributes of any employee and are control, experience and ability. They will feel that if a subordinate were lacking in great detail in any of these factors they will not be up to what is best for their business and possible alternatives would need to be sought out.
Q: The nature, differences and implications for management of transactional and transformational theories of leadership.
Kuhnert and Lewis developed transactional and transformational theories of leadership in 1987. They believed that both demanded different skills. Transactional theories include the allocation of work, making routine decisions along with monitoring performance and interacting with other functions within the organisation. On the other hand, transformational theories are about having the skills and personal qualities to be able to recognise the need for change and being able to identify appropriate courses of action.
The first leadership theory I will study here will be House and Mitchell's Path Goal Leadership Theory. The Path Goal theory essentially represents an application of expectancy theory of motivation. The theory believes that the leaders are a very important source of motivation provided their behaviour can enhance desirability of good performance in the eyes of their subordinates.
The nature of the Path Goal Theory is such that it contains four main areas. These areas include the behaviour of their leaders and the outcomes they produce along with contingency factors based on the subordinates and the environment. If we where to analyse the environmental contingency factors we would see that they in turn branch into a further three areas. These are the task structure, a formal authority system and finally a work group. The task structure states out what task is to be performed and how it is to be structured and the formal authority system details the interpersonal roles such as liasing with leaders and figureheads, informational roles such as monitoring subordinates or being a spokesperson. Finally the formal authority system spots out the decisional roles such as those that an entrepreneur would carry out or possibly a negotiator. After environmental issues we then would move on to subordinate contingency factors. These are based upon the core attributes of any employee and are control, experience and ability. They will feel that if a subordinate were lacking in great detail in any of these factors they will not be up to what is best for their business and possible alternatives would need to be sought out.
