transformational leadership. Due to the recent changes in orJDQL]DWLRQV¶HQYLURQPHQW, structure and
technology, it has been argued that transformational leadership is, increasingly demanded from all
leaders throughout the organization (Spreitzer & Quinn, 1996).
Most of the research on transformational leadership however, has emerged from the observation of top
managers in organizations, rather than middle and lower level managers (Bryman, 1996). Bass (1997),
for example, reported that his initial assumption that transformational leadership was limited to the
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senior executives and 86$UP\FRORQHOVGHVFULELQJWKHLUOHDGHUV ́$YROLRHWDO(1984) also argued
that the behaviors of transformational leadership was more prevalent at higher organizational levels.
Bass, subsequently found evidence of transformational leadership at every level in organizations,
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researchers interviewing chief executives and senior managers, rather than data collected directly from
subordinates of managers. Nonetheless, the results over a decade of using MLQ scales (Lowe et al.,
1996) show that transformational leadership behaviors were much more common among lower-level
managers. Lower-level leaders were rated higher than top-level leaders on all transformational
leadership scales. Hence, there is controversy on the manifestation of both strategic and
transformational leadership across organizational levels. This study includes an ANOVA test in order
to examine whether the differences in means of the focal managers at different organizational levels
were significant for both the strategic leadership and transformational dimensions.
7.2 METHOD
7.2.1 SAMPLE
Similar to the previous study, the study was conducted online as a leadership survey. The sample
described in this chapter is a composite sample, which is used in subsets for the different studies
described in this chapter and in the subsequent chapters eight and nine. As a result the sample
collection was multi-purpose.