Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
The field of leadership is considered the backbone of organizational and behavior theories and hence achieved highest level of attention of numerous organizational theorists, psychologists and management experts since long. We, the authors of this paper, are highly intrigued by the extent of interest and the work being done by academia, to explore the dynamics of leadership, in general, and transformational leadership in particular, over the past two decades. The concept of leadership has taken a leap from once being interpreted as a matter of human personality traits to the modern day’s notion of leadership, as human actions (Stogdill, 1974; Gardner, 1989; Lussier, Achua, 2012). Hence, in the backdrop of supporting theories and numerous studies, it is concluded with confidence that transformational leadership theory has evolved into a matured leadership model (Bass, Avolio, 1990).
Extensive research, on the concept of transformational leadership proposes focused attention to ensure ethical organizational leadership practices (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985; Bass and Avolio, 1990; Howell and Avolio, 1992; O’Connor et al., 1995). Hence, in the case study, we tried to explore unethical work leadership practices at three work locations of one European multinational company. In the wake of intense corporate competition, either economic, social or technical in the global business scenario, it is now a routine to come across incidents marked by ethical transgressions, though not necessarily illegal, most of the times, but certainly characterized either as ethical or unethical activities of the people in authority.
The current study begins with a literature review of transformational leadership style, and pseudo transformational leadership, then will proceed to formulate the study hypotheses. The focus on research methodology and research model will be discussed at the third section. The analyses of study findings and recommendations will be provided for managers and management researchers, at the end of this research paper.