CAN TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Given the number of scandals over recent years with respect to the shady, amoral, immoral and often criminal behavior on the part of multinational CEOs and other executives, it is becoming more and more important to be able to identify such behavior before it does irreparable damage: both to individual firms and to the economy as a whole. This is even more crucial today when multinational roots have spread throughout the world and glnbalization has baused an intertwining of economies so that a scandal in New York will have serious repercussions in Singapore.
Among the key questions both researchers and practitioners are asking themselves are:
Is there a way to define leadership qualities, styles and abilities so as to be able to identify a type of leader who can improve business ethics?
More specifically, does one specific type of leadership enable business ethics more than other types?
If so, is transformational leadership the one that makes a difference when it comes to the improvement of business ethics?
It is the contention of this paper that, despite the high-level and desirable qualities shown by a transformational leader, the mere fact of a person being defined as a transformational leader does not necessarily mean that the firm's business ethics will be improved. In fact, the opposite may well be the truthùwith transformational CEOs prepared to impose their vision and way of doing things with little concern for the niceties of morality or ethical behavior.
However, before an informed response can be made to the questions above, it is important that the paper briefly examine some of the leadership research that has been done over the last 50 years. The following represents a brief literature review with respect to leadership research in that time periodùwith a concentration on the differences between transactional and transformational leaders.
According ...