Transformational Leadership

Leadership is required by all organizations, as it facilitates them in the accomplishment of their goals and vision. Indeed, leadership is crucial and essential to the success of any organization, as they are the key stakeholders responsible for bringing new strategies and methodologies into practice. Leaders are the motivating facets for the entire organization that convince the acceptance of change in order to achieve the common goals. On a broad spectrum, leadership interweaves leaders with their employees (including subordinates, co-workers and so on).

Leaders in the public sector are expected to maintain a level of morality and integrity which serves the interests of society, while at the same time demonstrates personal responsibility, diplomacy, and truthfulness. Therefore, when attempting to arrive at appropriate ethical decisions, public administrators must possess the capacity to exercise moral imagination. However, moral imagination is not enough. Responsible administration in the public sector also requires acting based on the “right”

Belle Nicolai of Bocconi University, writing in the Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, identifies four characteristics of transformational leaders:

The findings of article one dispute the stereotypical paradigm believed to be found in public sector bureaucracies. Leadership and excellent performance by public sector organizations do not need to be hindered by the typical bureaucratic subsystems when a well designed transformational leadership model is implemented.

Caldwell, C., Dixon, R., Floyd, L., Chaudoin, J., Post, J., & Cheokas, G. (2012). Transformative Leadership: Achieving Unparalleled Excellence. Journal Of Business Ethics, 109(2), 175-187. Retrieved from:

Accountability is what establishes public trust. Public administrators should expect to be held accountable for what they say and what they do. Serving the public means being transparent, not keeping secrets. Citizens expect that public administrators and organizations are working on their behalf. They expect that the employees and the organization are providing programs, products and services that are in the best interest of the communities and the individuals that the organization supports. Ethics serve as the bridge for accountability between the administration and the public. Ethical practices create an environment of trust. The trust that the public places in these organizations is the cornerstone for the building and maintaining of communities that thrive. It’s important to note that organizations are only as good as the people that are in them. The people that are in them look to their leadership as a guide for what they do and how they do it. Leaders that exhibit moral conduct, honesty, integrity and transparency will set the foundation for the organization and the employees within it and these values will even penetrate throughout the citizenry and the community. (IACP, n.d.) This will have a direct impact on potential issues, hopefully minimizing

As I take a moment to reflect on my time here, I have learned that I have traits of a Transformational Leader but that I also have room for improvement. I have highlighted areas in where I felt I needed the most improvement to become the Transformational Leader that I aspire to be. For the next three to five years, I plan to implement these changes to improve the way that I utilize the Elements of Adaptability, The Who, Stakes and Situation, Impact on Work Center Climate, and Ethical Behavior concepts. Understanding and effectively implementing these changes will make me a better leader for my subordinates, peers, and supervisors.

Given the crucial role that government plays in society, public administrative values should begin with a deep commitment to these concepts. In keeping with the tenets of democratic theory, Public Administrators are presumed to share the values of the larger society and, at the same time, have an individually developed and deeply rooted commitment to the concepts of representative government. In the public sector, responsible public administration embraces and promotes ethical behavior and practices in the workplace. Since people are impacted by internal and external factors, there is also the potential for Public Administrators to be influenced to participate in or adopt behaviors that cause them

This capstone paper explores how Transforming Leadership principles, as prescribed by Anderson, Gisborne, & Holliday, et al. (2006), can be applied to a typical law enforcement agency in order to better address common issues faced by agencies that have not identified an overarching leadership competency structure. By not adopting a set of leadership ideals agencies can find themselves not effectively addressing all of their strategic planning goals, both internally and externally, as Anderson, et al. (2006) suggests. This paper examines how the principles and formulas of Transforming Leadership apply to areas within the core curriculum of the Public Safety Administration field of study and can help assist the Suisun City Police Department mange strategic goals; including, assisting a law enforcement agency identify their core ethics, give better service to their community, develop strong group dynamics and human resources competencies, use strategic planning more completely and address Homeland Security issues more easily.

To counteract this affliction, public administration must become the focal point of good managers and leaders that embraces a centralized methodology, works unilaterally, and is empathetic towards societal norms. Furthermore, to prevent nuances during process considerations must conceptualize relational structures that improve productivity while advancing constitutional morals and ethics. (Cropf, 2008, p. 233). Unfortunately, in the case of bookkeeper turned director, she allowed her moral compass to misdirect her by not following council expectations as defined in her interim duties. Reality many times drives behavior, in this case it resulted in Suzie’s conflicting apathy towards the shelter that placed it over the established execution of her duties ultimately resulting in her actions while being considered “compassionate,” in the end were declared “unethical” (Cropf, Giancola, & Loutzenhiser, The Public Adminstration Casebook, 2012, p.

I agree with the author that any public official must have good moral and ethical standards so that he can work for the betterment of the people entrusted in his care, however it would be naïve to assume that he would never have to sacrifice on the ethical front for the “greater good.”

After a search in ProQuest the article Transformational Leadership and Public Service Motivation: Driving Individual and Organizational Performance, was selected for review to determine if the content is relevant to research topic. An empirical research method in which the authors reviewed a vast amount of past research was used to explore ways in which managers can use positive motivation to improve public service employee and organizational performance as well as give recommendations to assist managers to implement motivational values in a variety of management settings (Paarlberg, L., Lavigna, B.,

This paper summarizes the article written by Cam Caldwell, Rolf D. Dixon, Larry A. Floyd, Joe Chaudoin, Johnathan Post, and Gaynor Cheokas regarding the need for a new type of leadership in today’s social work environment, defined as Transformative leadership. The article itself varies in the definition, however in a broad sense Transformative leadership is maintaining good moral standing and sound business ethics among employees and individuals inside and outside the workplace. However, in order to reach this theoretical level of business related moral and ethical leadership known as

Over the past twenty years, an abundant body of researches have been done to review transformational leadership and transactional leadership. Burn (1978) was the first person to introduce and conceptualize the concept of transformational leadership and transactional leadership. Bass (1985) based on Burn’s concept and deepened his notion with modifications, which stated that one of the best frameworks of leadership is transformational or transactional. Following Bass and Avolio (1994, p. 4) provided the idea of these two leaderships and generalized them into the development of global economic world. Bass and Avolio (1997) also suggested that there was no need to view transformational and transactional leadership as

The opportunity to evaluate original research serves as one of the many foundations to both scholarly writing and research (Grand Canyon University, 2013). Therefore, to enhance this process I will critique empirical research articles for the purpose of demonstrating the effectiveness in understanding leadership ethics. So, using the literature presented within in the works of “Predictors of Ethical Code Use and Ethical Tolerance in the Public Sector” by Neal Ashkanasy, Sarah Falkus, and Victor Callan along with “Advancing Ethics in Public