Venkat R. Krishnan

Ethical preferences of transformational leaders: an empirical investigation

This study looked at the relationship between the four factors of transformational leadership – charisma, inspirational leadership, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration – and the leader’s preference for unethical behavior. Five ethical scenarios – bribery, endangering the physical environment, lying, personal gain, and favoritism – were studied using a sample of 100 pairs of managers and subordinates from four multinational organizations in India. Relationships between the leader’s ethical preferences and three outcomes – followers’ willingness to put in extra effort, perceived effectiveness, and satisfaction – were also analyzed. Findings indicate that inspirational leadership is negatively related to the leader’s preference for bribery and favoritism, and intellectual stimulation is negatively related to preference for bribery. Charisma and individualized consideration are not related to the leader’s ethical preferences. Followers’ willingness to put in extra effort is also negatively related to the leader’s preference for bribery and favoritism. Results also suggest that organizational culture might moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and ethics.

Value systems of transformational leaders

This study attempts to draw a value profile of a transformational leader – the leader who transforms people and organizations. It compares the terminal and instrumental value systems of leaders who are more transformational with those of leaders who are less transformational, using a sample of 95 pairs of leaders and subordinates of a non‐profit organization in the United States. Findings reveal that transformational leaders do have some identifiable patterns in their value systems. They give relatively high priority to “a world at peace” and “responsible”, and relatively low priority to “a world of beauty”, “national security”, “intellectual”, and “cheerful”. Results also suggest that transformational leaders might give greater importance to values pertaining to others than to values concerning only themselves.

Impact of transformational leadership on followers’ influence strategies

Effects of leader‐member exchange, transformational leadership, and perceived value system congruence between leader and follower on followers six upward influence strategies‐assertiveness, bargaining, coalition, friendliness, higher authority, and reasoning were studied using a sample of 281 managers working in various organizations in India. Results show that transformational leadership mediates the relationship between LMX and congruence. Both LMX and transformational leadership are related positively to friendliness and reasoning, and negatively to higher authority. Congruence is not related to influence strategies. Transformational leadership is the best predictor of friendliness, and neither LMX nor congruence explains significant additional variance in friendliness. Similarly, LMX is the best predictor of reasoning, and neither transformational leadership nor congruence explains significant additional variance in reasoning. Controlling for transformational leadership makes the relationship between LMX and higher authority non‐significant and controlling for LMX makes the relationship between transformational leadership and higher authority non‐significant.

Transformational leadership and outcomes: role of relationship duration

Purpose – To show that relationship duration enhances the effect of transformational leadership on followers terminal value system congruence and identification (cognitive outcomes), but not on attachment and affective commitment (affective outcomes).Design/methodology/approach – Data for this study were collected from the principal and 144 teachers of a prominent high school in western India. The principal and the teachers answered the value survey. The teachers also answered questions on transformational leadership and outcomes.Findings – The positive effect of transformational leadership on the outcomes is enhanced by the duration of relationship between leader and follower in the case of congruence and identification, but not in the case of attachment and affective commitment.Research limitations/implications – The entire sample of teacher‐respondents had a common leader (the school principal); this study needs to be replicated across a larger set of leaders to confirm the findings.Practical implicat...

Transformational leadership and personal outcomes: empowerment as mediator

Purpose – Creating and maintaining sustainable businesses require an understanding of the role of leadership in enhancing personal outcomes of employees, and of the processes by which they can be enhanced. The purpose of this paper is to report a study on analyzing how transformational leadership is related to followers’ meaning in life and subjective wellbeing, with psychological empowerment being a mediating variable.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 285 managers (69 females and 215 males) of a large manufacturing organization in western India. They responded to questions about their superiors transformational leadership and their own empowerment, meaning in life and wellbeing.Findings – Empowerment mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and followers meaning in life and wellbeing.Research limitations/implications – Same‐source bias is a possible limitation of the study. Leaders self‐rating on transformational leadership could be taken, but it would not be ...

Transformational Leadership in India Developing and Validating a New Scale Using Grounded Theory Approach

This article reports on three studies that used a combination of methods to develop a measure of transformational leadership in India. The grounded theory approach was followed for generating the initial item-pool (n = 250). In the second study (n = 379), an exploratory factor analysis was conducted, followed by a confirmatory factor analysis, which resulted in a six-factor model. The factors show support for both universal as well as unique cultural dimensions. In the third study (n = 202; 101 manager—subordinate dyads) survey data were collected and support was found for sound psychometric properties of the new scale, including incremental, discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity. The new scale explained significant variance over and above the variance explained by the currently existing scale for measuring transformational leadership.

Can the Indian Worldview Facilitate the Emergence of Transformational Leaders

Several studies have highlighted the importance of transformational leadership in enhancing organizational performance and follower commitment. This paper outlines four basic components of the Indian worldview—an understanding of the real nature of this world (theory of Maya), preference for action over inaction, perceiving the potentially divine nature of oneself and others, and visualizing freedom as the supreme goal of human existence—and presents propositions relating those components to transformational leadership. An argument is made for teaching Indian philosophy in schools and colleges in India to facilitate the emergence of a greater number of transformational leaders who could lift people to higher levels.

The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Followers' Duty Orientation and Spirituality:

The relationships between transformational leadership and followers’ karma yoga (duty orientation), spirituality (oneness with all beings), organizational identification and normative organizational commitment were studied using a sample of 144 teachers of a prominent high school in western India. Spirituality is the goal of all existence according to the Upanishads, and karma yoga is a simple means to enhance spirituality. It was hypothesized that karma yoga enhances spirituality, transformational leadership enhances karma yoga and spirituality, and all the three in turn enhance organizational identification and normative organizational commitment. Results of structural equations analysis shows that transformational leadership enhances followers’ karma yoga; both transformational leadership and karma yoga enhance followers’ oneness with all beings: both transformational leadership and oneness enhance organizational identification; and both karma yoga and organizational identification enhance normative commitment. The implications of transformational leadership addressing both followers’ real needs (karma yoga and oneness) and organizational interests (identification and commitment) are discussed.

Towards Understanding Transformational Leadership in India: A Grounded Theory Approach

An important factor that contributes to successful organizational transformation is leadership. Transformational leaders take strategic decisions and give shape to such changes, thereby ensuring that their organizations stay competitive. While the core of transformational leadership is universal, timeless and immanent, its behavioural manifestations, however, differ across cultures. This paper attempts to take a preliminary look at those behavioural manifestations of transformational leadership that are unique to Indian culture, most of which have been drawn from Singh and Bhandarkers (1988) model. After using the grounded theory method for data generation, 1617 response sets obtained from 250 working managers were content analyzed. Results show that the universal dimension of transformational leadership constitutes 44 per cent of the responses, while culture-specific dimensions constitute the rest. The 56 per cent Indian cultural dimensions have been operationalized through seven sub-dimensions, ‘Nurturant’ (20 per cent), ‘Personal Touch’ (13 per cent), ‘Expertise’ (7 per cent), ‘Simple-Living-High-Thinking’ (7 per cent), ‘Loyalty’ (4 per cent), ‘Self-Sacrifice’ (3 per cent), and ‘Giving Model of Motivation’ (2 per cent). The paper concludes by discussing the importance of recognizing culture-specific manifestations for leading change.

Power and moral leadership: role of self‐other agreement

The relationships between moral leadership, transformational, transactional, and laissez‐faire leaderships, and certain outcomes were studied using a sample of 116 managers of a large manufacturing organization in eastern India. Results reveal that transformational leadership partially mediates moral leadership’s relationship with follower’s extra effort and satisfaction, and leader’s effectiveness, and it fully mediates moral leadership’s relationship with leader’s power. Based on whether leader’s self‐rating was more than, same as, or less than follower’s rating of leader’s transformational leadership, leader‐follower dyads were classified into three categories – overestimation, agreement, and underestimation. Findings show that moral leadership is lower in overestimation than in agreement, and is lower in agreement than in underestimation. Correlation between moral leadership and power is also the highest in the case of underestimation. Leader’s power, however, does not differ across categories.