Transformational leadership among Spanish upper echelons: The role of managerial values and goal orientation

This paper seeks to investigate the relationship between managers' beliefs and goal orientation and the self‐perception of transformational and transactional leadership styles and how this relationship is moderated by the level of formal education.

A sample of 76 top executive officers reported their managerial values and beliefs by completing measures of McGregor's Theory XY philosophy of management and Dweck's learning and performance goal orientations. They also reported their use of transactional versus transformational leadership styles with their direct reports and their degree of formal education.

Regression analyses revealed that ratings of transformational leadership are associated with theory Y philosophy of management and a learning goal orientation; whereas ratings of transactional leadership were found to be associated with performance goal orientation. In addition, executives with higher levels of education reported greater behavioral integrity, that is, greater alignment between their managerial beliefs and their corresponding self‐ratings of leadership behaviors.

This paper contributes to the transformational leadership literature by adding a cognitive perspective to the well‐studied behavioral patterns of transformational leaders.