Dr. Mubbsher Munawar Khan Assistant Professor, Hailey College of Commerce, University of the Punjab, PAKISTAN

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1 Transformational, Transactional, and Laissez-Faire Styles of teaching faculty as predictors of satisfaction, and extra effort among the students: evidence from higher education institutions Dr. Mubbsher Munawar Khan Assistant Professor, Hailey College of Commerce, University of the Punjab, PAKISTAN Muhammad Ramzan Assistant Professor, Hailey College of Commerce, University of the Punjab, PAKISTAN Ishfaq Ahmed Lecturer, Hailey College of Commerce, University of the Punjab, PAKISTAN. Muhammad Musarrat Nawaz Lecturer, Hailey College of Commerce, University of the Punjab, PAKISTAN. ABSTRACT It can be considered as success of faculty member if students are satisfied and willing to put extra effort towards their studies. The following study is intended to determine the leadership style of faculty member in terms of transformational, transactional, laissez-faire, and whether their style contributes towards satisfaction among students and urges them to contribute some extra efforts towards study tasks. The data were collected form faculty members working in both, public and private higher education institutions. The respondents are highly qualified and mature. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) has been used to collect and analyze the data. SPSS 17.0 and AMOS 16.0 are used to find out the relationships and association. Implications of the research and future guidelines for academicians and researchers are also discussed. Keywords: Leadership, Higher Education, Education Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Laissez-Faire, Satisfaction, Extra Effort INTRODUCTION Leadership is in presence on this planet from the day a group of people joined hands together for the completion of common goals yet the researchers began to study leadership as a part of academic and organizational disciplines in the early part of twentieth century. The topic of leadership has been in focus since a long time and eventually became a topic of great interest as leaders have to provide with guidelines and motivate others towards accomplishment of tasks. So the research began on focusing the effectiveness of leaders to foster a positive transformation and accomplishment of individual as well as organizational tasks (Burns, 2004). The leadership studies started with the traits approach and included behavior of leaders and situational factors later on to determine leadership effectiveness (Robbins & Coultar, 2005). One of the theories which are enjoying importance and continuous research and development is the theory of transformational-transactional leadership. This theory of leadership practices is called cutting-edge leadership theory by Professor Robbins (2005). The transformational style include four major ingredients to motivate employee and get them involved into the work activities including idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation. The other category, transactional leaders, identifies specific tasks and provide with possible rewards in case the tasks are achieved. The third category included in the model is the style of avoidance and being passive while looking at the 130

2 situations called passive/avoidant style of leadership. These three distinct categories of styles are identified through their various dimensions that are nine in total hence called the nine-factor full range leadership model. The current study is designed and conducted to find out the dominant leadership style of educational professionals in higher educational institutions using the nine-factor full range leadership model and its impact on followers satisfaction, and their intentions to put extra effort for the leaders. The reason to choose education sector is that this is the prime sector that acts as a nursery for future leaders. The class that seeks higher education serves the key posts in almost every sector of the country. To have future leaders in focus, the following study is tries to find out the leadership style of the current educational professionals directly interacting with the students in our higher education institutions. LITERATURE There have been lots of studies on leadership and leader styles and behaviors. These studies explored many of the dimensions of leadership. Among the many of models for leadership the ample models of that explains the leader styles is the full range leadership model having 9 factors in all and that includes leadership styles, in terms of transformational style of leadership, transactional style of leadership, and passive\avoidant style. Initial studies of social sciences covering the topic of leadership were focusing two perspectives of leadership called directive leadership or task-oriented leadership and participative leadership or people-oriented style of leadership. Transformational leadership can be either directive or participative and is not an either-or proposition (Bass and Riggio, 2005). A leader in its true line of duty has a remarkable control and command to mold the situation as per needs of the organization or as per his will to get people involved in a certain line of duty. He has a trait to make subordinates work in a certain direction to make them effective or at least the less and less wasting (Karlof & Lovigsson, 2005). The recent trend of research has found that transformational leadership is very much important in every organization and for all the organizational setting (Bass and Riggio, 2005). The Full-Range Model of Leadership, as suggested by Bernard Bass (1985), has now availed scholarly recognition in the research community and considered now a days the mainstream in leadership research (Stordeur, D'hoore, & Vandenberghe, 2001). The transformational aspect of leadership included four first order factors. These factors include idealized influence that is further classified into two subcategories, the idealized attributes and idealized behavior. The first related to perception of followers regarding leaders personality as being a powerful person having influential traits while the second is regarding the behavior of leaders that is influential and idealized by the followers. Another factor is inspirational motivation that explains the way of leaders to energize people through identifying and communicating vision and purpose. The third factor intellectual stimulation helps the followers in providing with a logic and analysis of situation to prepare for it and overcome it for best possible solutions. While the fourth aspect individualized consideration is the behavior of leaders to deal with followers by advising them, providing them with support, and considering the individual needs to develop their self-esteem and self-actualization.(antonakis, Avolio, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003) Transactional leadership, on the other hand, is based on an exchange between the leader and followers. It is like an agreement where both the parties contract each other to work and get rewards. Transactional style of leaders leadership is theorized to comprise two first-order factors: Contingent reward that may be called as a constructive transactions that identify the leader behaviors focused on identifying the clear tasks along with the expected rewards to be received on accomplishment fulfilling the spirit of exchange between the parties, and management-byexception (active) that is an active and corrective transactional roles defines an active vigilance performed by leaders to ensure the right and timely accomplishment of planned objectives. (Antonakis, Avolio, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003). The Passive/Avoidant style of leaders refer to two first order factors including: management-by-exception (passive) that is a passive and corrective transactional role defines leaders who tend to interfere only if noncompliance with standards is identified or if the mistakes have already happened. The other ingredient Laissez-faire is called the absence of leadership neither transactional nor transactional instead they avoid involvement into making decisions and, abdicates responsibility, and avoids using their authority. This is considered the most passive component and the least effective form of leader behavior (Antonakis, Avolio, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003). More recent research has accumulated that demonstrates that transformational leadership is important in every setting. Transformational leaders pursue others to perform beyond expectations and beyond what they think as 131

3 possible. They tend to settle high performance expectations into the followers. They enjoy a followership that is satisfied and more committed. Moreover, transformational leaders develop their followers by empowering them and paying special attention to their needs as individuals and in this way they indirectly facilitate their own leadership (DeVries, Roe, Taillieu, 1999). Moreover they found a positive relationship between the followers needs and charismatic style of leaders. Transactional leadership emphasizes the transaction or exchange, transformational leadership is in some ways expansion of transactional leadership that include some more inspirational factors raising the leadership to the next level. Early social sciences perspective on leadership focused on the dichotomy of directive (task-oriented) versus participative (people-oriented) leadership (Kan & Parry, 2004). Transformational leadership can be either directive or participative and is not an either-or proposition. Transformational leadership has much in common with charismatic leadership, but charisma is only part of transformational leadership. Transformational leaders do more with colleagues and followers than set up simple exchange or agreement (Bass and Riggio, 2005). They behave in ways to achieve superior results by employing one or more of four core transformational leadership components. Transformational leaders tend to promote their interest and vision for multiple reasons, the two dominant reasons may be utilitarian or moral. Being inspired by utilitarian approach, their main purpose is to provide maximum benefit to the group they are leading or its members being individuals, facilitating organization or the society for which they are working, as well as providing benefits for themselves, and also focusing to meet all the challenges inherent to their task or their mission. As followers of moral principles, the main focus of the leaders is doing the right thing, that are the practices that best fit the moral principles, sense of discipline, responsibility, and above all, respect for the delegated authority, the prevailing customs of the area, the rules and regulations, and the norms of that society. The element of transformational leadership that usually best distinguishes authentic from inauthentic leaders is individualized consideration. The authentic transformational leader is truly concerned with the desires and needs of followers and cares about their individual development. Followers are considered as ends not just means. Transactional and transformational leadership can be found in all parts of the globe and in all forms of organizations. Research evidence from around the world suggests that transformational leadership typically provides a positive augmentation in leaders performance beyond the effects of transactional leadership (Bass & Riggio, 2005). Focus of Kan and Ken (2004) are four important aspects of leadership process. They were studying the nursing leadership in a New Zealand hospital setting and study was a longitudinal study. They conducted a detailed study on these four aspects of change, group involvement, goal attainment and influencing others. The notion to carry with along the study is that leadership is a dynamic process occurring in a dynamic context. As per their point of view the word process in the definition of leadership is more than a linear, mono-directional event. Bodla and Nawaz (2010) found a significant and positive correlation among the transformational leadership style and follower satisfaction. In a study by Rosser, Heck, Johnsrud (2003) on the effectiveness of dean and directors, they argued that role of higher education is to provide with reasonable workforce as future leaders. They should be assessed and held responsible for making the students a healthy contribution to the work environment. Tejeda, Scandura, & Pillai, (2001) are with the view that emerging theories of the day include the theory of transformational, charismatic or visionary leader which dominate much of the latest literature and provide sound scientific approach to look at the situation for academicians and practitioners. They are with the view that these leaders create a long lasting impact on their followers, organizations, and at last on the societies as a whole. Tejeda et al (2003) also quoted the transactional and passive\avoidant leadership as mundane leadership. They are with the point of view that transformational leadership encourages subordinates ideas by involving them in the problem solving process and clarifies new ways to handle a variety of situations. An article by Gilstrap (2009) provides a historio-graphical analysis of the factors that contributed in leaders effectiveness found that academia polished the skills of students as leaders and provide them a vision and purpose of life. The articulated a framework for research on leadership and organizational developments focusing the change and performing the professional duties that will focusing on a continuous transformation of processes and people that will positively affect the followers motivation to work and satisfaction. De Vries, Roe, & Taillieu (1999) concluded in their article that followers are found more dependants on the leaders instead of less dependency in case they are following a charismatic or transformational leader. They conducted their study on 4523 Dutch households from telephone directory of a certain area. Among them 2000 households having one or more job-holders sent their will to participate and 958 questionnaire were returned to them duly filled. This is rather amazing to find out that if there is a transformational leader leading the team the members are more relying on him rather than be a leader themselves. The effort, motivation and performance level of the followers or 132

4 subordinates is far more enhanced in case there is a transformational or charismatic leader is there. In their words charisma referred to individuals endowed with special qualities, standing out of the crowed. Mumford, Antes, Caughron and Friedrich (2008) concluded that charisma is an important dimension in determining leader s role as a motivator and facilitator for task achievement and follower satisfaction. Howell, and Higgins (1990) concluded that transformational leadership behavior can be a major contributing factor to build up champions in organizations. They identified their proposed model that champion emergence is based on personality, the transformational leader behavior, and a variety of influence tactics. The following hypothesis has been developed and tested by applying correlation analysis H1: Transformational leadership style and follower satisfaction are positively correlated H2: Transactional leadership style and follower satisfaction are positively correlated H3: Liassez-Faire style and follower satisfaction are negatively correlated H4: Transformational leadership style and follower s extra effort are positively correlated H5: Transactional leadership style and follower s extra effort are positively correlated H6: Liassez-Faire style and follower s extra effort have are negatively correlated METHODOLOGY The current study is a descriptive field study using a personally administered questionnaire. Population of the study is the teaching staff serving with the higher education institution of the state of Punjab, Pakistan. The teachers selected as population were having designations of professor, associate professor, assistant professor and lecturers. The respondents are highly qualified individuals as the criteria for teaching is Masters degree at minimum while promotions are also depending upon the achievement of higher qualification and experience. It is a one shot study in which data is collected from respondents as per their self perception. The instrument used for the data collection is called the multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ) form 5x-short which has previously been tested for its validity. There are 45 items in this instrument using a 5 point Likert scale ( ) where 0-Not at all, 1-once in a while, 2-sometimes, 3-fairly often, 4-frequently, if not always. There are 45 Institutes of higher learning located in the vicinity of Punjab that is the biggest province as per its population and resources. These institutions have more than 2500 faculty members both in public and private sector. A toal of 400 questionnaires were distributed and 290 questionnaires received back with 265 usable responses. The respondents include full time teachers including 151 male and 114 female participants whereas 157 are in public sector and 108 are serving with the private sector. All the respondents are personally contacted and questionnaires were distributed to them to be filled in. A few questionnaires were got filled at the time they were distributed and other questionnaires are collected later on. Personal visits to faculty member offices in their time of convenience proved to be a difficult task. The data collected throughout the period was entered primarily into Microsoft Excel and some descriptive, charts, and basic tests are applied therein. Then data is also entered into SPSS package 16.0 for further in detail analysis and tests. Some descriptive tests are applied to find out the characteristics of the respondents such as age, genders, qualification, experience, designation, and the sector in which they are currently serving public or private. The Pearson s correlation coefficient applied to find out the relation between transformational, transactional, passive\avoidant leadership and the leadership outcomes extra effort, satisfaction. The significance of relationship is measured at confidence levels 95% and 99%. The individual ratings and averages of individual scores are calculated to find out the degree of transformational, transactional, and passive\avoidant leadership. ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION The demographic characteristics of the respondents are as follows. The respondents included male and female faculty members of different age groups with a diversified experience and age group. However the majority is working as lecturer or Assistant Professor in various higher Education Institutions. The transformational leadership style has a significant and positive relationship with the outcomes extra effort, and satisfaction confirming the hypothesis H1 and H4. The transactional leadership style has a significant positive relationship with the outcome satisfaction confirming the hypothesis H2, while no significant relationship with the outcome extra effort rejecting the hypothesis H5. The passive/avoidant leadership style has no significant relationship with the outcomes extra effort, and satisfaction yet a negative relationship with these outcomes and confirmed the hypothesis H3 and H6. 133

5 CONCLUSION The findings of the study suggest that the educational professional should be more transformational or transactional in order to satisfy the followers and avoid the liassez-faire style as it is not significantly related with follower satisfaction and extra effort rather it has a negative relationship REFERNCES 1. Antonakis, J., Avolio, B. J., & Sivasubramaniam, N., (2003). Context and leadership: an examination of the nine-factor full-range leadership theory using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, The Leadership Quarterly, 14, Bass, B. M., and Riggio, R. E., (2005). Transformational Leadership (2 nd Edition), Routledge, Taylor and Francis group 3. Bodla, M.A., and Nawaz, M.M., (2010). Transformational Leadership Style and its relationship with satisfaction, Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 2(1), Burns, J. M., (2004). Transforming Leadership, Grove Press, New York 5. DeVries, R.E., Roe, R.A., Taillieu, T.C.B., (1999). On Charisma and Need for Leadership, European Journal of Applied Psychology, 8(1), Gilstrap, L. D (2009). A Complex Systems Framework for Research on Leadership and Organizational Dynamics in Academic Libraries, Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp Howell, J. M., & Higgins, C. A., (1990). Champions of Technological Innovation, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 35 No. 2, Kan, M.M., and Parry, K.W., (2004). Identifying paradox: A grounded theory of leadership in overcoming resistance to change, The Leadership Quarterly, 15, Karlof, B., & Lovingsson, F. H., (2005). A-Z of management Concepts and Models, Thorogood Publishing, London 10. Mumford, M. D., Antes, A.L., Caughron, J.G. and Friedrich, T. L.(2008), Charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leadership: Multi-level influences on emergence and performance, The Leadership Quarterly, 19, Robbins, S. P., & Coultar, M., (2005). Management (8 th Edition), Pearson Education, Inc. 12. Rosser, V. J., Johnsrud, L. K. and Heck, R. H. (2003), Academic Deans and Directors: Assessing Their Effectiveness from Individual and Institutional Perspectives, The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 74, No Stordeur, S., D'hoore W., and Vandenberghe C., (2001). Leadership, organizational stress, and emotional exhaustion among hospital nursing staff, Journal of Advanced Nursing 35(4), Tejeda, M. J., Scandura, T. A., Pillai, R., (2001) The MLQ revisited, Psychometric properties and recommendations, The Leadership Quarterly, 12,

6 Table 1: Demographics of respondents Characteristics N=265 Percent Gender Male Female Age (years) Above Designation Associate Professor Assistant Professor Lecturer Experience (years) Above TABLE 2: Correlation Analysis Extra Effort Satisfaction TRANSFORMATIONAL Pearson Correlation.315(**).291(**) Sig. (2-tailed) TRANSACTIONAL Pearson Correlation (**) Sig. (2-tailed) PASSIVE/AVOIDANT Pearson Correlation * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). Sig. (2-tailed)