A College Leader' s Transformational Leadership

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to assess the tendency of leadership for the selected leaders in terms of transformational and transactional leadership. Participants in the study included the Chairman of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy (ELP) in one selected university in the United States, identified in the study as Dr. B (pseudonyms); the Dean of Graduate School of Education; two professors and three secretaries in ELP. The following questions are examined in this study. Are the data from the study connected with the domains and categories of behaviors of Dr. B with Bass and Avolion’s (1994) transformational behaviors? Do respondents attribute idealized influence to the chair? Does the chair use transactional behavior? Does the chair practice Laissez-Faire or avoidant leadership? Findings are interpreted in terms of the nine leadership categories of Bass and Avolio’s Full range of Leadership (Bass & Avolio, 1994; Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1995). Findings indicate that respondents’ report increased effort and this effect is distributed across two domains of the chair behavior. In the chair domain, articulating professional values and beliefs, increased effort is attributed to the chair’s values, equity and practice is student-focused. In the chair domain, developing collaborative culture, increased effort is attributed to the chair behavior of building the learning capacity of schools.