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Introduction
Burns (1978) identified two types of leadership (transformative and transactional) on the basis of a qualitative analysis of the biographies of political leaders. He (Burns 1978, p. 20) viewed the transformational leader as one who "engages with others in such a way that the leader and the follower raise one another to a higher level of motivation and morality." The transformational leader was posited in contrast to the transactional leader who exchanges relevant rewards contingent on a display of desired behaviors. Bass (1997) claimed that this kind of leadership is found in all countries, in all organizations and on all hierarchical levels.
Since the original ideas about transformational leadership by Burns (1978) and Bass (1985), a large number of developments and versions of the scales has been launched (Bass, 1985, 1996; Seltzer and Bass, 1990; Bass and Avolio, 1997). Yukl (1999b) has noted that the components of transformational behavior have varied somewhat across different versions of the questionnaire, and more component behaviors have been added. Recent empirical research is mainly based on Bass and Riggio (2006).
The shortcommings of transformational leadership theory and research
The magnitude of interest in and of enthusiasm for transformational leadership is out of proportion with its weaknesses. The theory has some grave problems: there are conceptual limitations; the conflation of managerial and political leadership; the theory is presented both as a universal and as a contingency theory; the claim that transformational leaders are more effective than transactional ones is not empirically supported; and the use of the term "followers" rather than "subordinates" creates confusion in the study of formal organizations. Finally, does transformational leadership theory qualify as a managerial leadership theory?
1. Conceptual weaknesses
A few researchers have been critical to the transformational leadership theory from the performance perspective (e.g. Yukl, 1999a, 2010; Pawar, 2003, Tourish, 2013). Are the dimensions of idealized influence, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation the reasons for or the description of for transformational leadership? Further, the theory has a bias toward the relationship between the leader and the followers, which limits its potential for explaining organizational effectiveness. There is also a tendency in the theory to explain effectiveness in terms of skills and behaviors rather than as outcomes of actions (Yukl, 2010).
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