Leadership roles and transformative duties – preliminary research

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present empirical evidence about the roles of leaders and how those roles mesh with transformative leadership as a new theory of ethical stewardship.

Design/methodology/approach

Statistical methods are implemented to test the associations between specific leadership roles and six transformative leadership perspectives. Data are collected from Likert-type responses from a survey of 399 faculty, staff, and students of a Catholic University in South Florida.

Findings

Analysis results indicate that there are significantly positive associations between six leadership perspectives of transformative leadership and the five roles of leadership in the Kouzes and Posner (2012) model.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to empirically transformative leadership, a new theory that incorporates six highly regarded leadership perspectives. It provides a framework for understanding the ethical duties of leaders and affirms the importance of those duties as they correlate with Kouzes and Posner’s highly regarded five-role model.

Citation

Xu, F., Caldwell, C., Glasper, K. and Guevara, L. (2015), "Leadership roles and transformative duties – preliminary research", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 34 No. 9, pp. 1061-1072. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-12-2014-0156