Leadership development is neither new nor unique to the public sector. The interest in the public sector leadership resurged in parallel with the transactional/transformational leadership debate in the 1980s and then culminated in the 1990s, when public management studies began to focus on the differences between leadership in public administration and leadership in business (van Wart, 2003). A common response of research was to further investigate leadership as an important and crucial variable for public sector organizations that may lead to enhanced management capacity, as well as organisational performance. Transformational leadership, as one of the three basic leadership styles (Bass, 1985), is most clearly associated with positive outcomes such as performance, employee commitment and satisfaction (Barling et al., 1996, Bass & Riggio 2006; Trottier, Van Wart, & Wang 2008). Empirical studies conclude that transformational leadership is as common in public as in private organizations (Bass and Riggio, 2006; Lowe et al., 1996; van Wart, 2011).
Transformational leadership as one of recent additions to the leadership theory has proven an effective form of leadership in a variety of settings, from business to governmental institutions, education, health care, and the non-profit sector, in many countries. Transformational leaders behave in ways to achieve performance by employing one or more of the four components: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Bass, 1985).
The purpose of this paper is to examine transformational leadership in different cultural contexts. We start form the hypothesis that every type of leadership corresponds to the underlying social structures. Variation of leadership types should therefore correspond to the variation in the social structures of different countries. Our central idea is, that populations of different countries have different expectations regarding leadership and different ideas what constitues a legitimate leadership type. These expectations should have strong innfluence on the acceptability of a particular leadership type. Our study explores transformational leadership as a two way process with the Bass and Riggio (2006) assumption that followers not only seek an inspirational leader to guide them through uncertain environment but also want to be challenged and to feel empowered. The emphasis on followership is particularly relevant for the public sector due to its concern with legitimacy and public acceptance. Thus, the prevalence of a particular type of leadership in a given country should correspond to the social structures and preferences of a general population in that country.
We begin by highlighting all four components of transformative leadership and establish multidimensional indicators for each component. Using existing and publicly available data from databases such as ISSP and WVS studies we will explore how transformational leadership is perceived in specific cultural contexts and to what extent followers undertake active role in leader-follower relationship.
