Anne Bøllingtoft

Conceptualizing and Measuring Transformational and Transactional Leadership

Existing conceptualizations and measures of transformational and transactional leadership have unclear theoretical bases, confound leadership and its effects, and are not necessarily suitable for public organizations. Overcoming these problems is necessary to test how leadership affects performance. Many public administration scholars apply the concepts, emphasizing the need to ensure that the concepts are applicable in both public and private organizations. The article reconceptualizes transformational and transactional leadership and develops and tests revised measures that can be employed on employees and leaders, are robust in terms of repeated use by the same respondents, and are applicable to public and private organizations alike.

Leadership in a changing world: developing managers through a teaching and learning programme

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a model for the development of effective leadership teaching and learning. The model takes central factors into account, which have previously been identified as obstacles to the successful development of leadership qualifications. The paper presents the theoretical background for the model and makes suggestions for its implementation in a teaching and learning programme. The model integrates overall elements related to human biology and transfer of learning into a holistic learning process, which more specifically emphasizes the transformational leadership elements of envisioning, translating, communicating and sustaining credibility during change. Design/methodology/approach – The teaching and learning programme is based on a comprehensive leadership learning model, which integrates different levels of knowledge, learning processes and learning formats. Findings – In the area of leadership development, the paper presents its teaching and learning program...

Collaborative Communities of Firms: Role of the Shared Services Provider

Both small- and medium-size entrepreneurial firms face liabilities such as resource scarcity and scale diseconomies, making it difficult for them to innovate on a continuous basis. In response, experimentation with new ways of organizing for innovation has increased. One successful result is an organizational model called the collaborative community of firms. This chapter addresses an important organizational role in a collaborative community that of the shared services provider (SSP). The SSP acts as a facilitator in the community, helping member firms collaborate with one another and developing strategic initiatives that aid the community as a whole. We discuss the facilitator role of the SSP, contrasting it with the coordinator role found in other multi-firm organizations, and we show how SSPs function by describing three examples of collaborative communities of firms from different sectors: the US-based Blade.org and two Denmark-based communities, the Kalundborg Industrial Symbiosis and MG50. Implications for the theory and practice of organization design are discussed.

Low-Hanging Fruit: Leadership, Perceived Prosocial Impact, and Employee Motivation

ABSTRACT Transformational leadership affects public service motivation, but little is known about the context dependency of this association. If citizen contact and, therefore, relative perceived impacts on others and society differ, the association between transformational leadership and motivation is also expected to differ. Analyzing public employees and their leaders from four organizational contexts, we find that employees have relatively higher perceived impact on others and are more user-oriented in contexts with high citizen contact. The association between transformational leadership and employee motivation also depends on employees’ perceived impact, implying that some fruit hangs lower than other when leaders try to increase employee motivation.

Employee perceived effect of leadership training: comparing public and private organizations

ABSTRACT: This study reports on the effectiveness of a year-long field experiment involving training in transformational and transactional leadership in the public and private sectors. Using before and after training assessments by employees of several hundred Danish leaders, the analysis shows that transformational leadership training is associated with increases in behaviors linked to both transformational leadership and the use of verbal rewards, but only for public sector organizations. There is no impact in private sector organizations. Transactional leadership training appears to be equally effective in stimulating the use of pecuniary rewards in both public and private organizations.