Contemporary psychology, Vol. 6 No. 1, 2003.
Original scientific paper
Transformational and transactional leadership: relationship with personality traits
Silva Čulina Germošek
Željko Jerneić
Abstract
The study examines the relationships of the broad dimensions of the Big-Five personality model with transformational and transactional leadership. Two questionnaires were administered on a sample of 155 managers: MLQ for the measurement of different types of leadership behavior and NEO-FFI for the measurement of personality. The analysis of managers' self-ratings revealed the differences between transformational and transactional leadership in terms of their relationships with the dimensions of personality. While the components of transformational leadership consistently correlated with Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness, the components of transactional leadership and laissez-faire style showed different patterns of relations with personality traits. Correlation pattern obtained for contingent reward, as the most active component of transactional leadership, proved to be the most similar to that of transformational leadership, with the laissez-faire style as the most passive form of leadership behavior showing the most disparate relationships. Multiple correlation found between Big-five personality dimensions and a composite score on transformational leadership was 0.54 indicating that considerable amount of variance in transformational leadership could be attributed to personality factors. In general, the results are in line with Bass' theory and support the hypothesis on the personality traits as dispositional basis of transformational behavior.
Keywords
transformational leadership; transactional leadership; Big-Five personality model; self-ratings; MLQ; NEO-FFI
Hrčak ID:
3225
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2003.
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