Measuring Transformational Leadership: Case Studies vs. Surveys

Introduction

The notion of transformational leadership, first developed by James MacGregor Burns in 1978, has become the subject of great debate and discussion in academic and corporate circles. While management scholars may disagree on the exact definition of transformational leadership and what it means to be a transformational leader, there does appear to be some consensus that transformational leading involves bringing an organization to a higher level of performance by selling a vision that appeals to organizational and staff values (Boje, 2000). Transformational leadership has been credited with success at companies such as Apple, Chrysler, and Disney, and companies regularly seek charismatic executives who have the potential to be transformational leaders (Yukl and Howell, 1999).

But in order to truly appreciate the effect of transformational leadership, we must be able to measure its results. As the saying in business goes, anything worth doing is worth measuring. This raises the question of how best to measure the effects of transformational leadership. Researchers have often relied on observational case studies and quantitative survey instruments to study transformational leadership, and both strategies have advantages and drawbacks.

Determining the best practice for studying transformational leadership will ultimately require a three-step approach: (1) developing a consensus definition of transformational leadership, so we understand what exactly needs to be measured; (2) reviewing case-study research to assess relative strengths and weaknesses; and (3) analyzing quantitative studies of transformational leadership to determine how they function as a measurement tool. By conducting this three-step process, we learn that transformational leadership involves a series of components that are not always easily measured by either research method, and that, ultimately, the best research practice would combine elements of case-based and quantitative study.

Defining Transformational Leadership

While Burns may be credited as a founder of transformational leadership — and he was indeed the first to use and define the term — he was strongly influenced by the earlier writings of Max Weber (Boje, 2000). In publications from the first half of the twentieth century, Weber began to explore what he considered the three types of leaders: bureaucratic, traditional, and charismatic. The bureaucratic leader relies on a system of rules and transactional measures, such as compensation, to lead followers. The traditional leader, such as a king or queen, relies on a historically based claim to leadership. The charismatic leader, however, commands the respect and admiration of followers who believe in the leader's vision. Weber's charismatic leader is the antithesis of the bureaucratic leader and advocates a higher moral purpose.

Building on Weber's theory, Burns (1978) developed a concept based on the distinction between transactional and transformational leaders. Transactional leaders, like Weber's bureaucrats, see loyalty as something acquired through a transaction — for example, an organization's employees become loyal in exchange for salaries and benefits. The transformational leader, similar to Weber's charismatic leader, develops loyalty by seeking out followers' needs, engaging them, and motivating them toward a higher purpose. While Burns acknowledged that people in power can be both moral and amoral, he believed a leader must necessarily be moral in order to be considered transformational. Burns regarded leaders such as John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Mao Tse-tung as transformational leaders, because people followed them based on their charisma, vision, and sense of moral purpose.

Bernard Bass, diverging somewhat from Weber and Burns, did not envision an unbridgeable separation between transactional and transformational leadership (Bass and Steidlmeier, 1998; "Bass Transformational," no date). Rather, Bass contended that good leaders needed to be both transformational and transactional. For example, Bass believed a transformational leader needed to be able to resort to transactional methods to augment his or her leadership strategy, particularly when purely transformational methods were not fully effective (Bass and Steidlmeier, 1998; Homrig, 2001). Bass was also less stringent about the moral component of transformational leadership envisioned by Burns and Weber. He contended that followers will not typically adopt a leader's values wholesale; instead, they will make good-faith efforts to implement a leader's vision without necessarily altering their own value structure (Bass and Steidlmeier, 1998; Homrig, 2001).

This may not be an entirely fair criticism of Burns, who does in fact state that transformational leaders should understand and appeal to the value system of their followers. However, it is fair to say that value systems can vary across an organization, and Bass is correct that buy-in may always fall short of total. It is important to note that Bass still believes that transformational leaders rely on a values-based vision to lead followers through great change ("Bass Transformational," no date). However, his definition of transformational leadership incorporates the notion that transformational leaders can turn to transactional methods, which may even be necessary when followers' values cannot be universally engaged.

Many scholars have offered expanded interpretations of transformational leadership. Lynn Ballster Liontos (1992) offers practical strategies that she claims are a necessary part of transformational leadership, such as creating a collaborative atmosphere, offering staff development, and helping staff solve problems. The end product, Liontos argues, should be improved staff morale and the leader's heightened influence on staff and how they perform their jobs. Liontos also subscribes to the notion that a leader must sell a vision with a higher purpose and that transformational leaders must sometimes incorporate transactional methods.

Elizabeth Lolly (1996), similarly to Liontos, focuses on building a collaborative effort and giving employees the resources and support to succeed. In Lolly's model, transformational leaders provide a vision and a clear understanding of organizational goals. From there, leaders encourage the fulfillment of their visions by fostering collaboration and encouraging risk-taking, so long as it supports the organization's mission. Leaders also provide ongoing development opportunities and coaching — they do not reside in an ivory tower preaching values, but rather provide support to help employees implement the leader's vision. Furthermore, transformational leaders maintain their legitimacy by practicing what they preach and are seen by followers as standard-bearers of the organization's vision and goals.

While the notion of transformational leadership has evolved over time, some characteristics are arguably universal. If we want to gauge the impact of transformational leadership at an organization, we ought to be able to measure the following criteria:

Vision: Has the leader communicated a clear vision of transformation to employees, and is that vision more or less universally understood?

Values: Is the organizational vision values-based to some degree, and is there an effort to engage employees through their own value structure?

Loyalty: Does the organization rely mainly on transactional methods to earn loyalty from followers, or is a good deal of their loyalty based on belief in the leader and his or her vision? While Bass and others may contend that transformational leaders occasionally need to turn to transactional methods, an organization that relies mainly on such methods is arguably not engaging in transformational leadership.

Environment: Does the organization support collaborative work and offer training, support, and encouraged risk-taking to help achieve its mission?

As we consider whether case studies or quantitative research best measure the impact of transformational leadership, we will examine several studies and how effectively they have measured these four criteria.

Case Studies of Transformational Leadership

A number of case studies have examined the role of transformational leadership in various organizations. These studies often rely on interviews and the personal observations and interpretations of the researchers. A good example is Ed Gubman's (2006) analysis of Motorola's attempts to improve its supply chain. When Ed Zander became CEO in 2004, he discovered that Motorola's autonomous business groups were cooperating poorly, which was negatively impacting the company's global supply chain. Zander decided to apply the principles of transformational leadership to encourage Motorola employees to think as a team.

Gubman's (2006) case study is able to measure the presence of some key components of transformational leadership. He noted the presence of vision — Zander's "One Motorola" plan — designed to help disparate business groups understand they were part of the same family. Zander's vision was also somewhat values-based, focusing on teamwork, idea sharing, and the desire for Motorola to be a leader in its field. Gubman also finds evidence that Zander built a corporate culture to encourage transformational change: committees including employees and senior managers were formed, Zander created an email account where employees could communicate with him directly, and a firm was hired to train employees on supply chain management best practices.

The weakness of Gubman's (2006) case study is that it does not meaningfully measure employee loyalty or the source of that loyalty. Gubman presents evidence that transformational strategies were used to build loyalty — such as recognition programs and the opportunity to communicate with senior managers directly — but he fails to measure the degree to which employees felt loyal to the company, or whether their loyalty had even increased under Zander. While the case study approach would have allowed Gubman to interview employees on their degree of loyalty, one is left to wonder whether a few selective interviews would allow for any generalizations about a company with thousands of employees.

Stephen Denning (2005) also attempts to measure the effects of transformational leadership through a case study of IBM's e-business strategy in the 1990s. Denning demonstrates how the idea of Internet business actually originated from a low-level IBM engineer who was able to gain access to and convince corporate leadership, including CEO Lou Gerstner. Company management eventually supported the idea and launched what became a multi-billion-dollar business unit.

Denning (2005) is able to demonstrate various components of transformational leadership. He shows a vision that originated from employees and was eventually disseminated by management — a practice encouraged by both Burns and Bass. The vision was developed around the value of IBM being an innovation leader responsive to employee ideas and customers' changing needs. Denning further demonstrates that IBM's corporate culture allowed the engineer and those who supported him to take risks in support of IBM's strategic vision. But Denning's research, like Gubman's, struggles to measure the role that employee loyalty played in IBM's eventual success. Did IBM employees embrace e-business because Gerstner sold them on the vision and the values, or simply because they were told what to do? Until we can measure loyalty and the source of that loyalty, we cannot fully assess whether leaders are succeeding through charisma and transformational ability or because of a more traditional power structure.

While IBM was already a powerful company before transformational leadership helped create its e-business initiative, Marvin O'Quinn and Kimberly Comer Mulqueen (2007) present a case study of an organization that was facing financial ruin before using transformational strategies to stage a turnaround. The Jackson Health System in Miami-Dade County posted an $85 million loss in 2004 before its CEO used transformational leadership to help all employees focus on financial improvement without sacrificing patient care. The vision was communicated through a program called "reCreate Jackson," and although the program goals were largely driven by financial considerations, organizational leadership was able to tap into employee values by emphasizing workplace pride and the importance of each individual employee to Jackson's mission.

O'Quinn and Mulqueen (2007) also demonstrate how Jackson management created a supportive environment by organizing collaborative workplace teams that could suggest improvements and manage projects. By involving all employees in the turnaround process, management hoped to secure employee buy-in and loyalty to the plan. While the results were impressive — Jackson posted a $10 million surplus the following year — O'Quinn and Mulqueen are unable to provide more than surface-level, anecdotal indication of how employees felt about Jackson management and to what degree their values aligned with management's. There was a clear attempt to develop employee loyalty using methods associated with transformational leadership, but the case study cannot probe in a meaningful way how employees felt as a group.

In fact, the tendency to focus on the actions of management and the eventual results of management initiatives is common in case studies of transformational leadership. This same flaw appears in Eddie Corbin's (2005) case study of transformational leadership in West Indies cricket and Paul Joyce's (2004) analysis of the turnaround of a public authority in Britain. Quite simply, it is easier for case studies to focus on a limited group, such as managers, than on a larger group, such as employees — particularly when organizations have a significant number of workers. But transformational leadership depends a great deal on employee perception and the reasons employees follow managers. Therefore, meaningful measurement of employee attitudes, beyond a few interviews, is critical for assessing the impact, or existence, of transformational leadership in an organization.

Conclusion

Ultimately, when it comes to assessing transformational leadership and its effect on organizations, case studies and quantitative research both have their pros and cons. Case studies are advantageous because the researchers often become observers, which allows them to gather information and learn things through open-ended inquiry that they may not have considered when first undertaking their studies. The disadvantage of case studies is that they often focus on the management perspective within a single organization and are limited in their ability to reach large numbers of people. They also rely on the subjective interpretations of the researchers, which could prove inaccurate.

Quantitative research, on the other hand, allows researchers to draw conclusions supported by large sample sizes and thorough statistical analysis. To a degree, the process of drawing conclusions becomes less subjective. What remains subjective is the process of determining which questions are asked. Researchers determine what they are going to learn — and what they are not — and are only able to base conclusions on questions that were posed in the survey instrument. They are not able to gather impressions and benefit from new information that can emerge in the more open-ended inquiry model of the case study.

In the end, the best research method for transformational leadership is arguably a hybrid model that incorporates the best elements of both case study and quantitative research. A good example is a study conducted by Daniel D. Reneau (2007). Reneau's research focuses on how transformational leadership was used to accomplish university-wide goals such as becoming more selective in the admissions process and developing more advanced graduate programs and research facilities. Reneau is able to incorporate the elements of a case study — such as how the vision was crafted and how its values were communicated to employees to create loyalty, as well as how support systems were established — while also using quantitative data, such as analysis of admissions figures, to statistically justify the impact of transformational leadership. In this manner, Reneau's research closes some of the information gaps that would likely result if only one research method were used.

In conclusion, studying transformational leadership does not have to involve choosing between a case study or a quantitative approach. Offering a thorough analysis of the components of transformational leadership and their effect on the workplace may necessitate drawing on what is best about both methods.

Works Cited

Bass, B.M. and Steidlmeier, P. (1998). Ethics, character and authentic transformational leadership. Retrieved Oct. 20, 2007 from

"Bass' transformational leadership theory" (no date). Changing Minds. Retrieved Oct. 19, 2007 from

Boje, D.M. (2000). Transformational leadership. Retrieved Oct. 20, 2007.