Burns (1978) argued that transactional leadership practices lead followers to short-term
relationships of exchange with the leader. These relationships tend toward shallow, temporary
exchanges of gratification and often create resentments between the participants. Additionally, a
number of scholars criticize transactional leadership theory because it utilizes a one-size-fits-all
universal approach to leadership theory construction that disregards situational and contextual
factors related organizational challenges (Beyer, 1999; Yukl, 1999; 2011; Yukl & Mahsud,
2010). Empirical support for transactional leadership typically includes both transactional and
transformational behaviors (Gundersen et al., 2012; Liu, Liu, & Zeng, 2011). Next, this
manuscript reviews two recent articles featuring transactional leadership theory.