Speak to the different leadership types (transformational, transactional, Passive leadership, Laissez faire) and it’s affect on Organizational Behavior. Speak to the positive and negative affects. Speak briefly about leadership relationships, such as role finding, role making, and role implementation.
Organization: Introduction, Thesis Statement, & Conclusion
Leadership And It’s Effect On Organizational Behavior
Leaders play a critical role in organizations; they facilitate firms’ success by influencing their followers to work towards achieving a common goal. While leaders can bolster an entity to success, they can also adversely affect its performance if their leadership style is incompatible with the workforce. For this reason, the present research aims to explore the transformational, transactional, passive, and laissez-faire leadership styles and their negative and positive effects on organizational behavior. The study also seeks to examine leadership relationships, such as role finding, making, and implementation.
Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership falls into the full-range leadership model category, which explores leadership behaviors in various organizational situations. According to scholars, this type of leadership is exemplified by leaders who seek to create a new corporate pathway towards growth and prosperity by developing and implementing new ideas and perspectives (Korejan & Shahbazi, 2016). This leadership style has four core dimensions: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration (Hoxha, 2019). These dimensions illustrate the manner in which transformational leaders influence their followers. As the name suggests, transformational leadership focuses on establishing new organizational approaches and ideas that can enhance an entity’s performance. Therefore, transformational leaders are more inclined to convert their followers’ behavior from old practices that are seen as inhibitors of organizational success, such as individualism, to new directions that promote optimal performance.
Empirical and theoretical studies suggest that transformational leadership positively impacts organizational behavior. As observed by Arif and Akram (2018), transformational leaders often motivate followers to explore new prospects of undertaking their daily duties. In turn, motivated employees are more likely to perform better and embrace positive behaviors such as collaborating with colleagues to attain optimal job results. The positive impact of transformational leadership on organizational behavior and performance can be traced from real-world leaders such as Richard Branson and his successful brand, Virgin. Most notably, Branson utilizes this leadership style to inspire his employees and create an exciting work culture that drives employees to deliver their best (Niphadkar, 2017). As a leader, Branson exemplifies the manner in which transformational leadership can engender employee commitment and contribute towards the success of a firm.
Despite boosting commitment, some studies suggest that transformational leadership may adversely affect organizational behavior at the group-level. Li et al. (2016) argue that undifferentiated transformational leadership may curtail individual innovation at the group level. Arguably, leaders’ attempts to foster group innovation may inhibit employees’ ability to explore new prospects, as leaders may mainly direct their attention to group achievements.
Transactional Leadership
Like transformational leadership, transactional leadership style also falls in the category of full-range leadership model. Scholars posit that transactional leadership is mainly based on the social interactions between leaders and their followers (Akhigbe et al., 2014). Akhigbe et al. (2014) also add that transactional leadership focuses on championing followers’ compliance through punishments and rewards. Fundamentally, transactional leadership is managerially oriented in that it focuses on getting the job done and very little on developing new ideas of optimizing organizational performance. Akhigbe et al. (2014) also posit that transactional leaders lack optimism about the future and prefer maintaining the status quo, unlike transformational leadership.
Like transformational leadership, transactional leadership has positive and adverse effects on organizational behavior. On the one hand, transactional leadership promotes motivation among employees by predicting the future and articulating the organization’s vision (Wei et al., 2010). This motivation, in turn, triggers employees to exhibit the best performance in their tasks. Furthermore, transactional leadership promotes the pursuance of a common purpose within an organization. This organizational behavior is mainly triggered by the fact that the transactional leader directs and controls employees’ efforts towards achieving the set goals in the manner in which the former believes yields maximum outcomes. Fundamentally, motivation and facilitation of the pursuance of a common purpose are the immediate positive effects of transactional leadership.
Unfortunately, transactional leadership is considered a significant hindrance to innovative behavior in organizations, arising mainly from the approach of leading adopted by such leaders. Wei et al. (2010) observe that transactional leaders often utilize the law of “the correct way leads to success” when delegating duties to subordinates, emphasizing more on performing tasks as is the norm. As a result, transactional leadership constraints innovative performance because employees are mainly compelled to undertake duties in an orthodox way.
When reflecting on transactional leadership, several global leaders such as Bill Gates, come to mind. For years, Bill Gates has presented himself as a transactional leader through his ways of leading employees. Most notably, control appears to be the core element of Bill Gates’s leadership; he leads his employees by articulating his vision and the manner in which he wishes to have every task completed. Although this leadership style restricts the employees’ freedom to explore other prospects, it facilitates the completion of essential tasks in Microsoft and attaining the company’s vision.
From a personal view, I could envision the use of transactional leadership in my current workplace, where most of the tasks are based on recurrent and urgent projects. Notably, employees in the organization mainly complete projects for clients on very tight deadlines. Often, some of these projects are behind schedule because of a lack of proper coordination among teams. In my view, the implementation of transactional leadership in the company could effectively foster the completion of the projects within the set deadlines. Arguably, a transactional leader could impose control and ensure that each project is completed as planned.
Passive Leadership
Passive leadership is a unique type of leadership that is rarely utilized in modern firms. Scholars aver that this leadership style is characterized by different behaviors such as the avoidance of decisions, failure to reinforce appropriate behaviors, and neglection of organizational problems (Adeel et al., 2017). In essence, the literature suggests that passive leaders often avoid taking action to manage corporate activities. However, passive leaders may intervene when an issue becomes a crisis or a threat to the firm’s survival. Fundamentally, passive leadership is a management approach characterized by minimum action by organizational leaders.
Several scholars argue against passive leadership on the ground that it is ineffective. Bass and Avolio aver that this leadership style impacts employees’ performance adversely (cited by Adeel et al., 2017). Arguably, employees may become less motivated to pursue a common purpose, coordinate efforts to achieve organizational goals, and indulge in unethical practices such as missing work in instances where the leader is less involved in decision making.
However, the proposers of passive leadership argue that it may have some positive effects on organizational behavior. Russo (2019) posits that passive leadership facilitates trust among the team and the leader because the latter allows employees to make their own decisions. From this point of view, one can argue that, to a considerable extent, passive leadership may foster innovation and motivation among employees due to the freedom granted by their leaders.
Overall, very few popular leaders portray passive leadership. Nevertheless, I have witnessed this leadership approach in some of the places that I worked before. Often, passive leadership affected organizational behavior by creating a conducive environment for the growth of unacceptable behaviors such as employee absenteeism. Nevertheless, the leadership style also promoted creativity among employees.
Laissez-Faire Leadership
Laissez-faire leadership shares similar traits with passive leadership. Northhouse describes this leadership style as a “hand-off, let things-ride” approach of influencing employees (cited by Tosunoglu & Ekmekci, 2016). Blake and Mouton also add that the leadership style resembles impoverished management (cited by Tosunoglu & Ekmekci, 2016). Like passive leaders, laissez-faire leaders intervene less in the organization’s everyday running despite being elected in the leadership position. These leaders often avoid decision-making in the firm, and they may exhibit minimum efforts to lead employees and direct the completion of organizational tasks.
As a result of its management approach, laissez-faire leadership has more adverse effects on organizational behavior. Tosunoglu and Ekmekci (2016) noted that this leadership style erodes employees’ feelings of trust due to the lack of presence and involvement of leaders in the organization. Lack of trust among employees likely affects their performance as they may be unwilling to give their best in an environment where their efforts go unnoticed.
Nonetheless, laissez-faire leadership could also foster creativity and innovation among employees. Arguably, as leaders become less involved in decision making, employees gain the autonomy to undertake the firm’s duties. In turn, the workforce may be motivated to explore different ways of undertaking their tasks because the leaders exert less control.
Leadership Relationships
Despite the differences in the highlighted leadership approaches, there is a similarity in their role dynamics, including role finding, making, and implementation. Role finding entails identifying a niche in social interaction, exploring a role that fills and the niche, and understanding the identified role’s expectations. Role making “characterizes how a person lives a role, and how he or she transforms the expectations into concrete behavior” (Herrmann & Jahnke, 2012, p.2). Role implementation is the last dynamic, and it entails the execution of the role in reality. In leadership, role implementation entails executing leadership plans in the organizational context.
Conclusion
Synthesis of information from this research confirms that each leadership behavior has a positive and negative effect on organizational behavior, which all depends on the lens from which the leadership approach is viewed. One of the common themes from the research is that transformational and transactional leadership promote employee motivation. Second, laissez-faire and passive leadership are exhibited as ineffective leadership styles, which despite promoting creativity, inhibit employee motivation and promote unethical practices such as frequent absenteeism due to lack of significant involvement of leaders in decision making and recognition of employees’ effort.
Information gathered from this research provides a foundation for the manner in which I interact and conduct business in the future. One of the critical lessons that I have learned from the course is that transformational leadership is effective when an organization requires a new way of optimizing success. Conversely, transactional leadership is best suited when things need to be done on time and in a conventional manner. Therefore, in the future, I will ensure that I adopt a leadership style that matches the existing organizational circumstances.
References
Adeel, M.M., Khan, H.G.A., Zafar, N., & Rizvi, S.T. (2017). Passive leadership and its relationship with organizational justice. Journal of Management Development, 37(2), 212-223. https://www.researchgate.net/deref/https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1108%2FJMD-05-2017-0187
Akhigbe, O.J., Finelady, A.M., & Felix, O.O. (2014). Transactional leadership style and employee satisfaction in Nigerian banking sector. European Journal of Business and Management, 6(26), 14-23. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/234625788.pdf
Arif, S., & Akram, A. (2018). Transformational leadership and organizational performance. Journal of Management, 1(3), 6-75. https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.5281%2Fzenodo.1306335
Herrmann, T., & Jahnke, I. (2012). Role-making and role-taking in learning. In book: Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.1007%2F978-1-4419-1428-6_1768
Hoxha, A. (2019). Transformational and transactional leadership styles on employee performance. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention, 8(11), 46-58. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337485370_Transformational_and_Transactional_Leadership_Styles_on_Employee_Performance
Korejan, M.M., & Shahbazi, H. (2016). An analysis of the transformational leadership theory. Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, 8(3s), 452-461. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jfas.v8i3s.192
Li, V., Mitchell, R., & Boyle, B. (2016). The divergent effects of transformational leadership on individual and team innovation. Group and Organization Management, 41(1), 66-97. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1177/1059601115573792
Niphadkar, C. (2017). The new age transformational leader: Richard Branson. International Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research, 8(6), 542-547. https://www.ijser.org/researchpaper/The-new-age-transformational-leader-Richard-Branson.pdf
Russo, J.D. (2019, August 28). The huge misunderstanding around passive leadership. Medium. https://medium.com/@julia.d.russo/the-huge-misunderstanding-around-passive-leadership-141f8c1f885c
Tosunoglu, H., & Ekmekci, O.T. (2016). Laissez-faire leaders and organizations: How does laissez-faire leader erode the trust in organizations? Journal of Economics, Finance and Accounting, 3(1), 89-99. https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.17261%2FPressacademia.2016116538
Wei, F., Yuan, X., & Di, Y. (2010). Effects of transactional leadership, psychological empowerment and empowerment climate on creative performance of subordinates: A cross-level study. Frontier of Business Research, 4(1), 29-46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11782-010-0002-6
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