Transformational and Transactional Leaders in Higher Education Coursework

Introduction

Leadership is a subject commonly taught in business classes. There is a direct correlation between effective leadership and organizational effectiveness and profitability. However, leadership is involved, in one way or another, in all aspects of organizational behavior. Educational institutions are no exception to this. Unlike in for-profit organizations however, their objectives are harder to outline. Educational organizations serve the nation rather than seek profit, their practices, while retaining a modicum of similarity, vary from one facility to another. The teaching process is largely determined by professionals in the field of education. In many ways, educational facilities resemble government institutions more so than business organizations.

The commercialization of education is changing this trend. In the US, the lack of government support forces universities and colleges to seek funds from other sources – be it from interested businesses, or from student tuition payments. Programs are being focused on preparing the students for the competitive environment of the labor market.

The leadership model currently in use in the majority of educational facilities is the transactional leadership model. It has been around for many years. The model suggests a simple working structure of effort-reward with leaders maintaining the status quo. The rising trend in the past ten to fifteen years is transformational leadership, which focuses more on individual needs of every employee, beyond the desire for monetary rewards. The purpose of this paper is to study the article titled “Transformational and Transactional Leaders in Higher Education” written by Lloyd Moman Basham, analyze its key ideas, compare them to three similar articles, highlight similarities and differences, and outline prospective directions for further research.

Transformational and Transactional Leaders in Higher Education – Key Ideas

Although Basham does not clearly state which system is more beneficial in an educational environment, the narrative clearly speaks in favor of transformational leadership. The author analyses and compares both systems, their strengths, and weaknesses. The key ideas he puts forth are as followed:

• Transactional leadership usually focuses on short-term goals, is quick to establish, and is highly hierarchical. It works on two principles – contingent rewards and management by exception. The employees have a clear understanding of what they are expected to do, which does not promote creativity since there is no need to perform better. The system does not take into account the importance of self-actualization, which leads to decreased satisfaction and decreased job performance (Basham, 2012).
• Transformational leadership is value-driven. It allows a degree of dispersal of power in order to promote leadership to all members, in contrast to following orders from the top. It emphasizes the understanding of employee motivations and use of personal charisma to motivate them. The system tends to be more enduring when compared to transactional leadership (Basham, 2012).
• Educational institutions are knowledge-intensive, and their effectiveness relies greatly on the quality of human resources. Since the transactional leadership system hampers that growth, a switch towards transformational leadership model is recommended, as it encourages growth, self-improvement, and self-actualization (Basham, 2012).

The paper will explore these statements by analyzing three articles that build up, expand, and test the plausibility of these claims.

Leadership Styles, Organizational Commitment, and Job Satisfaction

This article, written by Ayhan Aydin, Yilmaz Sarier, and Şengül Uysal, is a meta-analysis that explores and compares the effectiveness and influence of leadership styles on school outcomes. The variables used in this research are organizational commitment and job satisfaction. This study is important as it directly shares the key ideas voiced by Basham in his article, and offers statistical evidence to them. Here are the key points extracted from this research:

• Transformational leadership has lower scores at the first stage of organizational commitment, which is compliance. The authors rationalize that it is because superficial commitment can be easily imitated. However, transformational leadership shows much better scores in identification and internalization parts. This resulted in an overall improvement (Aydin, Sarier, & Uysal, 2013).
• Job satisfaction among teachers and other employees improved significantly when the authorities switched from transactional to transformational models. The effect size value rose from 0.56 to 0.81 (Aydin et al., 2013). This proves that transformational leadership affects job satisfaction in a positive way on a broad level (Aydin et al., 2013).

While the article does not offer any direct suggestions for further research, it does not offer any material that shows how transformational leadership can improve results. This is covered in the second article reviewed in this paper.

Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Student Achievement

The second article reviewed in this section was written by Nancy Allen, Bettye Grigsby, and Michelle Peters. It addresses the connection between transformational leadership and student achievement. Just like Basham, the authors of the article share his ideas that transformational leadership is a more fitting model for educational facilities. This quantitative study offers empirical support to several key statements:

• Transformational leadership has a good influence on school climate. It motivates both teachers and students alike and promotes inspiration and intellectual stimulation (Allen, Grigsby, & Peters, 2015).
• The results on the influence of transformational leadership on student performance are deemed inconclusive. The researchers admit that finding a correlation between the two is difficult, as the leadership model influences the results indirectly (Allen et al., 2015).
• Transformational leadership significantly improved the overall job satisfaction levels and emotional climate around the campus (Allen et al., 2015).

Relationship between Transformational and Instructional Leadership

The last article, written by Michael Finley, builds up on Basham’s ideas by drawing parallels between transformational and instructional leaderships. The author supports the notion of transformational leadership model being superior, and explores similarities and differences between the two systems of his choosing, finding ways of incorporating elements of one into another. The key points and suggestions illustrated in his work are:

• The Instructional Leadership model places the leader as “Master Teacher,” who is an expert in educational matters, more so than other teachers are (Finley, 2014).
• The concept of “Master Teacher” can be incorporated into a transformational leadership model, where the leader would be viewed not just as an expert, but also as a role model and an example of excellence (Finley, 2014).
• Instructional leadership is very hierarchical by nature. This part does not correlate with the transformational model and must be left out (Finley, 2014).

Conclusions

Transformational leadership models fit educational facilities better. The articles reviewed in this paper support this statement, along with the key ideas laid out by Basham. The first two articles offer empirical evidence and statistical data in order to support the effectiveness of transformational leadership models. The third article builds up upon the existing theory and offers an interesting solution for the incorporation of elements of the instructional model into the transformational model.

Prospects for future research include empirical evidence for the effectiveness of instructional-transformational leadership models, as well as additional evidence for the correlation between transformational leadership and student performance.

References

Allen, N., Grigsby, B., & Peters, M.L. (2015). Does leadership matter? Examining the relationship among transformational leadership, school climate, and student achievement. NCPEA International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation, 10(2), 1-22.

Aydin, A., Sarier, Y., & Uysal, S. (2013). The effect of school principals’ leadership styles on teachers’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 13(2), 806-811.

Basham, L. M. (2012). Transformational and transactional leaders in higher education. S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal, 77(2), 15-23.

Finley, M.J. (2014). An exploration of the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of principals’ instructional leadership and transformational leadership behaviours.Web.