The Phenomenon of Leadership 13
have become a pivotal organizing theme for much of the research and writing on
leadership. For Burns, and now many others, one basic form of leadership involves
a mutuality of immediate interests and exchange of benefits between leaders and
followers that can be called “a transaction” and is therefore termed “transactional
leadership.” Leaders meet the conscious needs and interests of their followers and
are rewarded with their support, or punished by its withdrawal. Leaders in turn
use rewards and sanctions to build their power base and to create discipline in
the ranks. Classic examples of these types of exchanges come readily to mind:
the politician elected to office rewards his supporters with jobs and punishes his
opponents by reducing their influence, a manager gains or loses the confidence
of an operating unit by providing or withholding capital resources, and a college
dean is judged to be effective if she increases faculty salaries and budget lines.
This form of leadership meets the basic test of reciprocity, for the mutuality of the
relationship is clear. Yet transactional leadership tends to accept the status quo,
and to avoid or deflect important forms of conflict over purposes and values. It
lacks the ability to respond creatively to the forces of change, to inspire followers
to superior performance, or to challenge the community or the organization to
meet demanding moral commitments.
In Leadership, Burns characterizes transforming leadership in primarily moral
terms. It involves the leader’s ability to summon followers to a higher level of ethi-
cal understanding and commitment, the capacity, for example, to move the group
or the society to the more elevated concerns of justice and equality, rather than
just the satisfaction of material wants and needs. The transforming leader who
engages followers at these encompassing levels of values and purposes also creates
pervasive, enduring, and fundamental changes in organizations and societies,
a conclusion introduced by Burns in Transforming Leadership.
As Burns’s ideas have been pursued by other scholars, such as Bernard Bass, they
have been translated into different idioms and contexts. For Bass, transforma-
tional leadership becomes a pattern of relationship between leaders and followers
in business, the military, and other organizations. Transformational leaders chal-
lenge their subordinates’ thinking, show personal interest in their development,
inspire them to higher levels of achievement, and represent a magnetic source of
attraction. Bass makes it clear that transformational and transactional leadership
are not exclusive alternatives, for most leaders show both characteristics in their
work (Bass 1990; Bass and Aviolio 1993).
In terms of leadership in higher education, it is clear that the words “transac-
tional” and “transformational” can be misleading if they are used to classify leaders
or their influence in exclusive categories. They are better seen as motifs and meth-
ods of leadership that are largely intertwined in practice, not as rigid categories to
be glibly applied to all the work of an individual or group. In Burns’s (2003) terms,
many transforming changes may take decades and can be the result of incremental
achievements over time. For colleges and universities, the key question becomes
the shape and intent of the processes of leadership and their potential to motivate
an academic community to respond effectively to change.