Business Management - Leadership Comparing Essay

Within this leadership framework, leaders motivate employees by directly promoting and modeling the desired personal commitment to the organization in a manner that often transcends the boundaries of the vocational environment. Instead of viewing their employment as merely an occupation or a quid pro quo arrangement, employees within a transformational organizational culture incorporate elements of their employing organization into their personal psychological orientation. In that regard, the mission, goals, and values of the organization become part of the employee's persona in a manner that often generates much higher levels of personal commitment than purely transactional leadership schemes.

Typically, transformational leadership relies on social rituals that encourage the melding of personal identity and organizational values and objectives. For this reason, transformational leadership style is most suitable for sales staff, because the clarity of organizational goals of increasing revenue are directly related to the specific efforts of employees (Bass, 1997; Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). However, precisely because transformational leadership demands such a psychological investment, that motivational framework is also susceptible to burnout, especially in sales-oriented vocational environments.

Transformational leadership is also applicable to organizational missions that manifest a moral focus, such as environmental conservation, religious commitment, and social concerns. In addition to being well-suited to the specific leadership techniques within transformational motivation dynamics, employees motivated by morally-based organizational values are less likely to experience burnout by virtue of the independent value of the organizational focus. While this is generally true of transformational leadership within organizations in general, it is particularly true where the employees share the organizational values before their employment within that organization (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999).

Fundamental Differences:

Whereas transformational leadership qualifies as a true leadership style, transactional leadership has been described more as outlining the fundamental relationship that exists between employer and employee, but without any correlation with leadership, per se. Transformational leadership, on the other hand, is often considered one of the most intense and personal types of direct leadership that much more closely parallels charismatic leadership styles, the primary difference being orientation and loyalty to organizational mission and values rather than to any individual within the organization (Bass, 1990; Bass, 1997). While all leadership styles differ in various ways, this fundamental difference makes transactional and transformational leadership diametric opposites: the former is commonly associated with complacency, mediocrity, and lack of motivation among employees, the latter is associated with a high level of personal and psychological investment that psychological burnout becomes a potential issue (Steidlmeier, 1999).

Finally, the two leadership styles also differ substantially in the requirements for successful leaders. Within transactional leadership-based organizations, the primary requirement for supervisors is technical competence. Conversely, within transformational leadership-based organizations, supervisors must possess charismatic interpersonal skills and the ability to motivate employee performance by leading social rituals and maintaining the high energy and commitment required under that organizational culture.

Bibliography

Bass, B. (1990). "From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision" Organizational Dynamics, (Winter, 1990).

Bass, B. (1997). "Does the Transactional/Transformational Leadership Transcend Organizational and Motivational Boundaries" American Psychologist, 52.…