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The Theory Of Transformational Leadership Essay

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Bass (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999) condenses many of the criticisms of transformational leaders, stating that they risk succumbing to the temptation of self-promotion, since the process sometimes revolves around impression management, or controlling the flow of information to influence people’s perceptions. He purports that this is incompatible to the maturation of collaboration, consensus-building and participative decision-making, and adds that self-promotion and a focus on self-interests can shift the culture of the organization into manipulation of followers to unethical ends (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999; Carlson & Perrewe, 1995). Bass also adds that followers can also be manipulated into losing more than they gain.
The consensus argument in favor of transformational leadership is that it supports continuous improvement and shapes organizational culture (Barnett, K. et al., 2001). In changing environments with often unstable consequences, transformational leadership is often seen as a useful style of leadership to rally differing opinions and search for common points of unity. However, many proponents argue that good leaders use a combination of transactional and transformational leadership styles (Bryant, 2003; Hoyt & Blascovich, 2003). Still, others suggest a new blend of styles, called “transcendental leadership” (Sanders, Hopkins, & Geroy, 2003), which both integrates and extends the transactional and transformational theories of leadership. This model describes

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