The Role of Transformational Leadership in Institutions: The Case of the Kuwaiti Educational Sector

Leadership and Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership originated from James McGregor Burns in 1978 when he had analysed some leaders’ ability across organisations (Burn, 1978), and has been one of the prevalent approaches to leadership in the 1980s (Northouse, 2010; Song et al, 2012). This was attributed to its “emphasis on aspects of intrinsic member motivation, follower development, and emotional caring in the workplace” (Song et al, 2012, pp 69). Transformational leadership arises when energy and commitment to a common vision transformed the organisation by developing its capacity to work collaboratively in order to circumvent the barriers and achieve the aspiring goals. In a nutshell, transformational leadership enables leaders to stimulate and inspire or transform the followers in order to achieve extraordinary outcomes (Leithwood and Jantzi, 2005; Odumeru and Ogbonna, 2013).

Transformational leadership theory connotes leadership that creates positive change in the followers who act in the whole group interest as well as catering for each other. From review of literature, other transformational leadership research areas include school culture, academic emphasis (Leithwood and Jantizi, 2005) and classroom conditions (Mulford, 2003). It has however been argued that transformational leadership is unethical when dealing with individual considerations (Bass & Riggio, 2006; Al-Sharija, 2012). Whilst numerous studies have been explored in the implementation of change and leadership, the impact of these head of practices on the processes has not been fully clarified, and whether or not there exist difference between theory and practice (Mumford and Licuanan, 2004; Afshari et al, 2008; Leithwood et al, 2006; Fullan, 2007; Cameron and Green, 2008)