Transformational Leaders Service and Technology Literature Review

Transformational Leaders

Challenges Facing Transformational Leaders: Service and Technology

In the present day, organizations incessantly experience and go through rapid technological changes, decreasing product life cycles, globalization, international global economic setting and also the extensive accessibility to information. As a result, in order for these organizations to continue surviving and being relevant in the market, there is a great need of going after new trends, increasing organizational growth and also being innovative than previously before. This is particularly the case with the technological and service sectors where there is constant change in invention and also preferences from the consumers. Transformational leadership is a substantial approach to motivate supporters beyond prospects and let out the creativity within them. This indicates the importance of transformational leadership in the technological and service sectors as it is the quintessence of generating and sustaining a competitive edge over rivals. Nevertheless, it is imperative to note these transformational leaders do face quite a number of challenges. This analytical literature review outlines and sheds light on the various challenges faced by transformational leaders, with focus in the technological and service industries. By using research papers, literature reviews and theoretical papers, the analytical review takes into account a vast range of information that reveals the various challenges experienced and faced by transformational leaders. Some of these challenges take account of the communication of transformational leaders at the business level and the challenges of the societal intricacies. Another major challenge is the sequestration of accustomed thinking systems and business practices that are engrained in the social order or organizational setting and coming up with new ones against the actuality of informationalism and globalization. In addition, transformational leaders have the challenge of coming up with a relationship with personnel that goes way past their functional and transactional relations. This analytical review might offer contribution to the advancement and further analysis of literature of transformational leadership. This is by coming up with an extensive literal framework that examines the different challenges that transformational leaders face and experience in the different sectors and organizational climates.

Introduction

In the contemporary, conceivably the prevalent challenge facing a person who is endeavoring to fill a leadership role in our present world is in deciding on exactly what the most effective style of leadership will be in the social order. In the present day, organizations place numerous burdens on leaders, demanding them to divulge vision, instigate change, and undertake challenging decisions. In order to cope with these demands, leaders ought to be adjustable and flexible. Transformational leadership best mirrors this adjustment (Bass, 1991). Transformational leadership is defined as a style of leadership in which relations and communications between interested parties are structured around a mutual purpose in such a manner that motivate, transform, and improve the activities and ethical objectives of followers (Simola et al., 2012). More so, transformational leadership is a style of leadership that strives for positive transformations in the followers and that attains sought after changes through the strategy and structure of the organization (Simola et al., 2012).

As initially established by Burns (1978), transformational leadership advances both leaders and supporters to greater levels of motivation and principles, while on the other hand, transactional leadership takes into account an interchange of material or psychosomatic recompense in return for the followers' amenability with the leader's requests, with no sense of any greater purpose. This initial theory was advanced by Bass and Avolio (1994), who state that transformational leadership encompasses four main factors which consist of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. Idealized influence alludes to the comportments of a transformational leader, which motivates his or her followers' conviction, esteem, respect, and their desires to imitate the leader. Inspirational motivation and idealized influence are typically united to create leadership that is charismatic-inspirational. Inspirational motivation alludes to transformational leaders sharing a convincing visualization or objective with their followers and continually inspiring them to reach for the objective, while furthering their self-assurance and encouraging them that obstacles faced can be overcome (Bass and Avolio, 1994). Third of all, intellectual stimulation alludes to transformational leaders stimulating their followers' ingenuity and innovativeness by questioning conventions and coming up with new methods and elucidations to difficulties. Lastly, individualized consideration alludes to the individual consideration that transformational leaders take into account with respect to their followers, where the leader functions as a tutor and mentor in distinguishing and developing the followers (Bass and Avolio, 1994). Transformational leaders are pertinent in the present day workplace for the reason that they are flexible and inventive. Even though it is imperative to have leaders with the fitting alignment, outlining tasks and handling interrelationships, it is all the more significant to have leaders who can drive organizations into prospects they have not yet conceived. This indicates the importance of transformational leadership in the technological and service sectors as it is the quintessence of generating and sustaining a competitive edge over rivals (Braun et al., 2012). However, transformational leaders do face quite a number of challenges in these sectors. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the challenges faced by transformational leaders, particularly in the service and technology industries. The paper will present this aspect through an analytical review of different research articles, literature reviews and theoretical articles.

Literature Review

Tracey and Hinkin (1994) provide a research paper that analyzes the challenges faced by transformational leaders in the services industry and, in particular, the hospitality industry. The study uses a quantitative research design. In assessing the behavior linked with transformational leadership, the authors acknowledged a hospitality organization that had been successful over the previous several years. The study sample included principal partners and forty-five corporate staff members who operated in the same offices as the partners. These members were thereafter asked to rate how effective each partner was under the criteria of interpersonal skills, communication, technical competence, objective clarification, bureaucratic justice, and organizational impact. For each of the aforementioned criteria, every leader was ranked on a scale of 1 to 7 with the former being highly ineffective and the latter highly effective. Transformational leadership was measured with respect to accredited personality, intellectual incentive, individualized contemplation, venerated influence, and inspirational leadership. On the other hand, transactional leadership was measured with respect to the employment of conditional rewards, active and passive management by exemption, and laissez-faire leadership. The results of the study indicated that the measure of transformational leadership had a strong and positive correlation with the different result measures. On the other hand, transactional leadership had no significant relationship. Tracey and Hinkin (1994) indicate that establishing niches, entering unexploited markets, and sustaining any control at the entire external environment are some of the challenges faced. Transformational leaders in the industry face the challenge of having an impact on external forces.

Leonard and Grobler (2006) present a research paper that explores a challenge facing transformational leadership with regard to communication. In particular, the paper assesses the communication of transformational leaders at the corporate level and the challenges of the societal complexities. It encompasses the challenge that transformational leaders face in applying communicative normative ideals so as to link the seeming agendas and the negative societal opinions and attitudes towards aspects of change and corporate transformations. The research study makes use of a multiple qualitative research design, which also encompassed the gathering of empirical evidence. The collection of data in the study encompasses the use of semi-structured interviews (Leonard and Grobler, 2006). With respect to the research in hand, Leonard and Grobler (2006) highlight the challenge that transformational leaders experience in the complexity of communication of different aspects and also encompassing the strategic value of communication. This is for the reason that more often than not, internal communication does not attain plenty of strategic emphasis compared to external communication. In addition, the other leaders within the organization also present a challenge in the sense that they consider communication to be a strategic implement and not a strategic manner. This causes the transformational leaders not to appreciate and take into consideration the intricate nature of transformation change communication in itself (Leonard and Grobler, 2006). In general, the challenge perceived and experienced by transformational leaders are the societal and commercial complexities, which hampers the communication of management of change (Leonard and Grobler, 2006).

The paper presented by Laubscher (2008) is a research paper. The study uses a qualitative research design. The research paper focused on transformational leadership and the general challenges faced by transformational leaders. In general, transformational leaders are anticipated to undertake actions that would result in expected change. However, as a result, this brings about different transformational challenges that they experience and which necessitate democratic and apparent facilitation. Transformational change encompasses the altering of ones' being. In other words, this is the generation of something that is presently not conceivable in ones' reality. In essence, change is the alteration of what one is doing and more so is the improvement of an aspect that is already conceivable in one's reality. The main challenge…