United States Sports Academy - "America's Sports University"

Abstract

The concept of leadership has gained a large amount of attention in recent years. This paper investigated the relationships between transformational leadership and organizational effectiveness in the field of recreational sport and leisure. First, it reviewed a discussion on the problem of organizational leadership from the perspective of the transactional-transformational model, particularly the arguments of researchers such as Burns and Bass. It examined the components of transformational leadership, then investigated several approaches regarding the conceptualization and measurement of organizational effectiveness. Finally, it looked at the controversy concerning the impact of transformational leadership upon organizational effectiveness. It argued that greater transformational leadership seems to be at least indirectly related to a higher degree of organizational effectiveness.

Introduction

The research of leadership has drawn great attention from scholars in various fields in recent years. Yukl (1989) noted the fact that "the study of leadership has been an important and central part of the literature of management and organization behavior for several decades" (p.251). Paton (1987) also realized that leadership has become the most "popular" subject in the field of sports management (Weese, 1994). For example, Weese (1994) mentioned that there are about 7,500 citations on leadership in Bass and Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership (1990). In an article talking about sports management and leadership, Soucie (1994) noted that there were quite a few doctoral dissertations focusing on "managerial leadership in sport organizations"

Soucie (1982) estimated that between 1969 and 1979, close to 25 studies, as reported in Dissertation Abstracts International, were completed on leadership. From 1979 to 1989, it is estimated from the same source that more than 30 other doctoral researchers investigated leadership as their primary dependent variable (p.6).

Although there is great controversy regarding the definition of leadership and thus approaches to studying the concept (Yukl, 1989), the author of this paper only focuses on the transactional-transformational leadership model and the relationship between transformational leadership and organization effectiveness. First, this paper looks at the definitions of transactional and transformational leadership and the components of transformational leadership. Then it reviews the discussions on the transactional-transformational model of leadership, particularly differences and relationships between the concepts of transactional and transformational leadership. In addition, it lays out the four elements of transformational leadership.

It also investigates the studies on organizational effectiveness and looks at the different approaches of scholars who have studied organizational effectiveness. Following this, it discusses the relationships between transformational leadership and organizational effectiveness. Through a review of related literature regarding the field of recreational sports and fitness programs, the author discusses relationships between transformational leadership and organizational effectiveness.

Transactional - Transformational Model on Leadership

A comparatively new leadership paradigm was proposed in the late 1970s (Burns, 1978) and was further developed in the 1980s (e.g., Bass, 1985) among leadership researchers - the transactional-transformational model of leadership. Burns (1978) first distinguished transactional leadership and transformational leadership (Weese, 1994; Yukl, 1989). According to Burns, transactional leadership is the "traditional form of leadership" in the context of organizations (Weese, 1994), which "involves leader-subordinate exchange relations in which the subordinate receives some reward related to lower-order needs in return for compliance with the leader's expectations" (Doherty and Danylchuk, 1996, p.292). On the other hand, it is believed that transformational leaders will motivate subordinates to pursue higher-order goals by transforming commitment to higher ideals and values instead of self-interests in order to benefit the organization (Doherty and Danylchuk, 1996; Soucie, 1994; Yukl, 1989).

Bass (1985) elaborated the transactional-transformational model on the basis of Burns' earlier efforts (1978). According to Yukl (1989), Bass offered a more detailed theory of transformational leadership as well as further differentiating transformational leadership and transactional leadership. Bass viewed transformational leadership from the perspective of leaders' influence on their subordinates. Subordinates, influenced by transformational leaders, are motivated to do more than what they are originally expected to do (Yukl, 1989). Bass argued that transactional leadership and transformational leadership are two "distinct dimensions rather than opposite ends of one continuum" (Doherty and Danylchuk, 1996) - they are distinct but closely related parts of leadership (Yukl, 1989; Weese, 1994).

In addition, Bass pointed out that transformational leadership is the augmentation and extension of transactional leadership, i.e., "all leaders are transactional, to some extent, exchanging rewards for performance, but some leaders are also transformational, going beyond simple leader-subordinate exchange relations" (Doherty and Danychuk, 1996, p.294). According to Doherty and Danylchuk (1996), Bass's argument was supported both empirically and theoretically by other researchers' studies.

Armstrong (2001) laid out four main characteristics of transformational leadership when he discussed the transformational leadership of sports teams' coaches, emphasizing: ethical behavior, sharing a vision and goals, improving performance through charismatic leadership, and leading by example (p.44-45). This shows a simplified version of the components of transformational leadership provided by Bass (1985), which also has four elements - intellectual stimulation, individual consideration, inspirational leadership, and idealized influence (Doherty and Danylchuk, 1996; Weese, 1994).

First, intellectual stimulation refers to a leader's capability to stimulate his or her followers to be more curious and creative in thinking and problem solving (Doherty and Danylchuk, 1996; Weese, 1994). Second, individualized consideration involves relationships between leaders and followers on two dimensions: developmental orientation and individual orientation (Doherty ad Danylchuk, 1996). In developmental orientation, leaders "assign tasks that will enhance an individual's potential, abilities, and motivation" (Doherty and Danylchuk, 1996, p.295). In individual orientation, "the leader emphasizes mutual understanding and familiarity via one-on-one relations and two-way communication" (Doherty and Danylchuk, 1996, p.295).

Third, inspirational leadership refers to the idea that transformational leaders inspire and encourage subordinates to create greater emotional attachments to leaders and greater identification with leaders' visions of organizational goals (Doherty and Danylchuk, 1996; Weese, 1994). The last element is the idealized influence. This component is closely related with charisma (Weese, 1994). Doherty and Danylchuk (1996) pointed out that idealized influence "is the behavioral counterpart to charisma" (p.295). This element refers to the fact that the charismatic traits of a leader will promote his or her followers' commitment in order to tap their full potential (Doherty and Danylchuk, 1996; Weese, 1994).

Many leadership researchers have argued in support of effective leadership having a positive impact on behaviors within organizations, especially transformational leadership's role in improving many factors of organizations (Weese, 1994). Now let's look at the concept that represents the performance of organizations: organizational effectiveness.

Organizational Effectiveness

The concept of effectiveness is of great importance to the understanding of organizational behavior (Chelladurai and Haggerty, 1991). However, organizational effectiveness is a term that is complicated, controversial, and difficult to conceptualize (Chelladurai, 1987). Therefore, it is no wonder that there are several different approaches to measuring and studying organizational effectiveness. As Soucie (1994) mentioned briefly, Chelladurai and Haggerty (1991) categorized four ways of measuring organizational effectiveness - these methods include the goal approach, system resources approach, process approach, and multiple constituency approach.

First, the goal approach, according to Weese (1997), is the most widely used. It views the effectiveness of an organization in terms of its success in realizing its goals (Pratt and Eitzen, 1989). Although it is regarded as the "most logical approach" to studying organizational effectiveness (Chelladurai and Haggerty, 1991, p.127), the goal approach has some weaknesses. Most obviously, organizations may have numerous goals that conflict with one another (Weese, 1997; Pratt and Eitzen, 1989). In addition, organizations may have goals that shift over time, especially short-term operative goals (Pratt and Eitzen, 1989). These shifts may be caused by organizations' interactions with their environments, by internal changes, or by pressures from outside. Therefore, organizational effectiveness is very difficult to measure by the goal approach if the organization's goals are "unclear, unstable, and conflicting with each other" (Chelladurai and Haggerty, 1991, p.127).

The second approach is the systems resource approach. An organization is viewed as effective if "it can acquire scarce and valued resources from the environment" (Sourcie, 1994, p.3-4). This approach is based on the assumption that organizations with many resources could produce satisfactory results that resource-providers need (Chelladurai and Haggerty, 1991). The more resources an organization can exploit and the better the position it will gain in bargaining, the more effective an organization is (Yuchtman and Seashore, 1967). Although studies of organizational effectiveness from the perspective of the systems resource model can examine an organization in the context of its interactions with the environment (the system that it is in) (Ghorpade, 1970), it has weaknesses. For example,

the disadvantages are several: little attention is directed toward the measurement of optimization of resources; the measures of effectiveness tend to be limited to specific organizations; and the concepts used in the systems resources approach are not mutually exclusively. An additional problem suggests that it is a matter of semantics as to whether business volume is one form of resource allocation or a goal. (Pratt and Eitzen, 1989, p.314)

The third approach is called the process approach, which focuses on organizational functioning and integration (Chelladurai and Haggerty, 1991). In this approach, an organization's effectiveness is viewed in terms of the smoothness and efficiency of its internal processes and general operation (Soucie, 1994). Weese (1997) pointed out that effective operations of an organization would not necessarily result in "heightened organizational effectiveness" because the sum of efficient components may not lead to an efficient whole (p.267). Therefore, this process approach of organizational effectiveness is also not without limitations.

Due to disadvantages and limitations of the three approaches above, a fourth approach, the "multiple-constituency" approach, was proposed (Weese, 1997). In this approach, the opinions of different constituent groups of an organization are taken into consideration to determine the effectiveness of an organization (Soucie, 1994; Weese, 1997). Chelladurai and Haggerty (1991) discussed the differences between the multiple constituency approach and the three approaches discussed above. They noted that the former approach integrates all three of the previous perspectives because this model "envisions the differential evaluation of an organization by different constituents on one or more dimensions of effectiveness" of "productivity, resource acquisition, or internal processes".

Organizational effectiveness is ambiguous in conceptualization and difficult to measure due to the fact that it has multiple dimensions such as goals, processes, and resources (Chelladurai and Haggerty, 1991). So far, the multiple constituency model provides a synthesis of the earlier goal approach, process approach, and system resource approach, and therefore appears to best represent the multiplicity of organizational effectiveness.

Relationships between Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness

Some efforts have been made to study the relationship between leadership, particularly transformational leadership, and organizational effectiveness. But there is still controversy over whether transformational leadership has a positive impact on organizational effectiveness. For example, Weese's (1996) article studying the relationships between transformational leadership, organizational culture, and organizational effectiveness revealed that there was no significant relationship between transformational leadership and organizational effectiveness. Similarly, Weese (1996), Lim and Cromartie (2001) also found that transformational leadership was not significantly related to organizational effectiveness. They suggested that subordinates play an important role in the determination of an organization's effectiveness.

Interestingly, Weese (1994) pointed out in an earlier article that many leadership scholars provided "convincing evidence" for the importance of leadership to the "success and survival" of an organization. He noted that transformational leaders, especially, "have a positive impact on employee satisfaction, productivity, and organizational effectiveness" (Weese, 1994, p.188).

In addition, both studies, Weese (1996) and Lim and Cromartie (2001), recognized the fact that there exists a significant relationship between transformational leadership and organizational culture while they rejected the argument that transformational leadership has an impact on organizational effectiveness. They also recognized that organizational culture has a great influence on organizational effectiveness (Lim and Cromartie, 2001; Weese, 1996). This implies that they at least recognize, although implicitly, that transformational leadership and organizational effectiveness are indirectly related with each other.

Conclusion

Leadership is an important, but controversial, concept to the understanding of organizational behavior. Burns (1978) and Bass (1985) provided a theoretical framework to studying two aspects of leadership - the transactional leadership and transformational leadership paradigm. Organizational effectiveness is no less controversial than leadership and there are four approaches to measure and study it. The integrated approach, or multiple constituency approach, appears to be the most comprehensive.

Studies on relationships between transformational leadership and organizational effectiveness are controversial as well. But it seems that leadership has at least an indirect impact on organizational effectiveness. Further empirical research and theoretical exploration needs to be conducted in order to gain a better understanding of the topic.

References

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