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Transformational leadership influences employees' attitudes, behaviors, and overall organizational assumptions (García-Morales et al., 2008). In studies comparing leadership styles, transformational leadership is usually studied in tandem with transactional leadership (Bass and Avolio, 2000; Judge and Piccoli, 2004; Masa'deh et al., 2016; Xie, 2019). Xie (2019) conducted a systematic literature review of the relationship between leadership and workplace learning. After synthesizing the literature, he concluded that the influence of transformational leadership on a learning organization is rarely compared with other leadership styles such as authentic leadership, ethical leadership, or servant leadership. However, studying emerging leadership styles may enhance our understanding of the impact of leadership on organizational outcomes. For example, Hoch et al. (2018) found that servant leadership differs from transformational leadership and has incremental predictive validity after controlling for transformational leadership.
This paper focuses on leadership's impact on an important organizational concept—learning organization—since learning better and faster is critical in today's fast-changing business environment and organizations (Baldwin, 2016; Örtenblad, 2018). The literature confirms that leadership has a positive association with learning practices in organizations (Beyerlein et al., 2017; Dirani, 2009; Garvin et al., 2008; Senge, 1990; Watkins and Marsick, 1993; Watkins and Dirani, 2013). However, despite the prominent positive connection in the organizational research between leadership and learning performance, few studies have linked leadership and the concept of learning organization (Di Schiena et al., 2013; Gentle and Clifton, 2017). Learning organization is conceptualized as an organization that facilitates learning and leverages learning results at multiple organizational levels (individual, team, and organization) to enhance performance. In a learning organization, “employees continually create, acquire, and transfer knowledge—helping their company adapt to the unpredictable faster than rivals can” (Garvin et al., 2008, p. 1). Learning targeted at the individual level is “necessary but not sufficient” to exert change at the organizational level (Marsick and Watkins, 2003, p. 133). It is worth noting that a similar concept—organizational learning—has been used interchangeably in the literature (Marsick and Watkins, 2003; Tsang, 1997; Örtenblad, 2001). Organizational learning is a process in which “an organization's members actively use data to guide behavior in such a way as to promote the ongoing adaptation of the organization” (Edmondson and Moingeon, 1998). However, organizational learning and learning organization are two...