Week 2 - Assignment: Describe the Senior Leadership Team's Role in Managing the Agency's Mission and Week 3 - Assignment: Examine Senior Leadership's Actions Toward Improving Organizational Efficiency

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Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice Volume 6(1), 2014, pp. 110–115, ISSN 1948-9137

THE PERFORMANCE EFFECTS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL

LEADERSHIP IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

DOINA POPESCU LJUNGHOLM [email protected]

University of Pitești ABSTRACT. My analysis complements the growing literature on the employees’ motivation to achieve organizational aims, the impact of transformational leadership in a public sector environment, the determinants of leaders’ behavior change, and the norms that support public administrators in their position as participants in democratic governance. The theory that I shall seek to elaborate here puts consid- erable emphasis on internal psychological processes that are prominent to employee attitudes and behaviors, the effect of task relevance on job performance, the duties and scope of transformational leadership in the public sector, and the normative features of transformational leadership in democratic governance. Keywords: performance effect; transformational leadership; public administration

1. Introduction

This paper aims to analyze and discuss the role of values in the leadership process, performance in public organizations, the effects of transformational leadership behavior, and the provocations posed by the targets of public organizations. The objective of this paper is to emphasize the relevance of employing individual perceptions (Pera, 2013a) when explaining employee behavior, leadership in the context of democratic governance (Nica, 2014a), public administrators as active participants in the governance process, and leadership policies in public sector settings. The results of the current study converge with prior research on public administration as part of the gover- nance process, pivotal constituents of transformational leadership in the public sector, the normative basis of transformational leadership, and the values expressed in the missions of public organizations. These findings highlight the importance of examining the moral component of transforma- tional leadership, the impact of leadership on public service motivation, leadership promotion of public service values, and the link between lead- ership and team performance.

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2. The Performance of Public Sector Organizations Mission valence is an employee’s perceptions of the appeal or prominence of an organization’s goal or social contribution. Transformational leadership is focused on vision articulation, and does not have a direct connection with mission valence. Public employees find their organization’s mission as relevant when their leaders create clear and appealing perspectives of the organization’s mission. The inspirational power of public missions should be fostered, successful leaders employ both words and deeds to direct and stimulate their employees, and extrinsic rewards can play an outstanding function in stimulating public employees. Transformational leaders raise the employees’ awareness of the relevance of organizational values and out- comes, and stimulate their higher-order necessities. (Wright et al., 2012) Leadership entails both an individual dimension and a networking one. Leaders may have an individual leadership development during their career. Different leaders interact in complementarity at various levels of leadership practice and in an interorganizational mode (complementarity prevails against authority in public management). The levels of leadership development may not correspond to a status: status is an occasion for leaders to substantiate their practice with prevalent topics, and may not guarantee the development of the leader. In the public sector, the practice of leadership is justified by the coexistence of political and administrative logics. Leadership not managed at the adequate level of action can have notable results in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. (Lemay, (2009)

Transformational leadership may stimulate intentional action and high public employee performance (Popescu, 2014), may be positively associated with follower performance, and may be a substantial match for a workforce with high levels of public service incentive. Fostering the perception of task importance among employees can augment their incentive and endeavor. Public sector leaders can successfully employ beneficiary contact and self- persuasion interventions to turn their perspectives into a concrete reality. Leaders can be efficient only insofar as they prevail in making their mes- sages reliable. (Bellé, 2014) Transformational and participative leadership behaviors are significant in teams where communication is driven by tech- nology: transformational behaviors that are emotional in nature may appear rarely in virtual teams, involving employees in the decision-making process may be time-consuming in virtual environments, whereas technology- mediated communication may have a negative influence on leadership behaviors, and on followers’ perceptions of them. Some leaders may boost transformational behaviors in virtual settings, whereas others may diminish them. Virtual teams function under conditions of challenge, confusion and uncertainty. (Purvanova and Bono, 2009)

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3. The Association between Transformational Leadership and Team Performance Transformational leaders create an attractive perspective of the organiza- tion’s mission and future, and stimulate and facilitate their followers to work toward that vision. Transformational leaders operate as a role model and create employee trust and pride in the organization, intellectually encourage followers to challenge old presumptions about organizational problems and practices (Nica, 2013), and modify employee perceptions of goal significance and transparency. Organizational aims set up a perspective of a desired future state, which supplies both a reason for the organization’s existence and standards by which performance can be evaluated. (Wright et al., 2012) Direct supervisors have a notable influence on someone’s work-related identity, being relevant as socializing agents as executive leaders do in in- dicating a set of institutionalized values. Institutions should transfer public service values from the institution in which they are incorporated to the individual’s identity (Mărășescu, 2014) as a member of the institution. Public service incentive is an autonomous kind of identity regulation which relies on internalized values that are the basis of an institution and its related identity (people will be public service stimulated because they have internalized public service values). (Vandenabeele, 2014) Organizational culture moderates the connection between leadership behavior and followers’ affective and normative commitment (leadership is relevant element in the commitment process). Transformational leaders highlight intrinsic rewards, identify the significance of collaboration in accomplishing collective tasks, and promote assessment of group achievements creating collective efficacy. Both transformational leadership and contingent reward are positively asso- ciated with affective and normative commitment. Transformational leader- ship does not clarify how continuance commitment advances. (Simosi and Xenikou, 2010)

In the public sector, it is not sufficient to concentrate only on leadership as a medium for carrying out change in the most successful way possible: transformational leadership should aim at democratic norms and the role of citizens (Peters, 2014) in both defining and accomplishing shared aims. Transformational leadership requires the leader to comprehend and support the necessities of followers. Leaders must show integrity and trustworthiness to accomplish organizational transformation and change. Democratic values, citizenship, and service in the public interest are the normative basis of public administration. The leaders and followers must incorporate citizens and public servants at all levels of the organizational chart. (Denhardt and Campbell, 2006) Virtual communication determines a sense of uncertainty and ambiguity in virtual followers. Transformational leaders may supply a

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sense of social context, structure the work (Dan, 2014), and bring about a sense of predictability and certainty, may create a sense of common mis- sion, team cohesion and team identity, and can establish certain aims and improve agendas for goal achievement. There is an outstanding interplay between transformational leadership and team type in forecasting team task performance. The most successful leaders enhance their transformational leadership behavior when they lead a virtual team. (Purvanova and Bono, 2009)

4. Causal Performance Effects of Leadership An organization’s mission can motivate those who are aware of its exis- tence and comprehend its significance. Transformational leaders aiming to develop goal transparence (Doherty, 2014) usually operate within the frame- work of formal performance management systems. Transformational lead- ership may be effective in public and nonprofit organizations that have powerful service- and community-oriented missions, and specifies ways in which the organization and its leaders can enhance the perceived attractive- ness or salience of the organization’s goal or social contribution. (Wright et al., 2012) Transformational behaviors advance a perspective that indicates the essential organizational aims, attempting to share the vision with the employees and to support the employee’s attention to the objectives. The conduct should be accomplished with the goal to trigger employees’ higher order need. Transformational leaders display behaviors that develop, share and support a perspective through a set of intricate and intertwined actions, attempting to make employees endeavor to attain organizational goals. Transformational leadership is enacted by the leaders but is generally eval- uated as the perception of employees. (Ladegaard Bro et al., 2014)

The values advanced by the supervisor are a representation of the in- stitutional values, transformational leadership and co-workers establish an approach to foster and socialize institutional values, and the institutional values as a component of the supervisor’s organizational function are transferred to the employee’s identity. Leadership at a supervisory level can determine employees’ public service motivation levels notably. Institutional elements have an outstanding effect on the individual public service moti- vation level. Satisfaction of basic psychological necessities has an influence on the socializing impact of leaders on compassion and democratic gover- nance. (Vandenabeele, 2014) By promoting active and inclusive participation, public leaders are instrumental in the development of citizenship. The chal- lenges of public leadership necessitate attention to transformation as both a moral process and a change one, public administrators should articulate organizations that can react directly and successfully to change endeavors,

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and all change in the public sector entails normative and value-based prob- lems because of the character of democratic governance. (Denhardt and Campbell, 2006) Transformational leadership behaviors are more relevantly related to performance in virtual than in face-to-face teams. Leaders modify their behavior across team types (Nica, 2014b), but the character of the change is not constant across leaders (they are likely to alter their behaviors based on context), effective leadership has a greater chance to affect people and outcomes under conditions of social and psychological uncertainty, and by advancing significant relationships with virtual followers, transforma- tional leaders can strengthen followers’ sense of being known. (Purvanova and Bono, 2009)

5. Conclusions Over the past decade, there has been increasing evidence describing the essential function of citizenship in the public leadership process, the nature of public leadership, the leaders’ role in achieving outstanding organizational change (Lăzăroiu, 2013), and transformational leadership’s role in deter- mining employee perceptions of the transparency of the organization’s goals. The current study has extended past research by elucidating the impact of transformational leadership on team task performance, the connection be- tween public service motivation and leadership (Pera, 2013b), leaders who alter their followers’ attitudes and undertaking to the organization’s mission, and the normative basis of public administration. My paper contributes to the literature by providing evidence on the importance of perceptions when investigating organizational behavior, the normative foundations of public administration, the effectiveness of transformational leaders, and the nature and duties of public sector leadership.

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