Transactional leadership is a concept introduced by sociologist Max Weber where it focused on leader’s role in
supervising and employees are very much motivated by rewards and punishment. Following this theory that relied
heavily on the concept of chain of command, James McGregor Burns further developed the concept of
transformational leadership where through the strength of their vision and personality, transformational leaders are
able to inspire followers to change expectations, perceptions, and motivations to work towards common goals.
Transformational leaders strategically communicate a collective vision among the employees and encourage them to
sacrifice their self-interests for the good of the organizations, a proactive method that embraces the concept of
intellectual stimulation, individualized considerations, inspirational motivation and idealized influence (Turner,
Barling, Epitropaki, Butcher & Milner, 2012; James, 2013). A concept explored by Bass, transformational leaders
incorporate this style by closely engaging themselves with the employees to fully understand their needs as well as
practicing empowerment and delegation in decision making processes and in the study of employee satisfaction,
transformational leadership that embrace interactive and engagement was found to have significant strong positive
effects (Men, 2014). It is also noted individualized consideration is a component of transformational leadership,
where transformational leaders recognize individual differences using them to develop potentials in achieving higher
performance (Avolio & Bass, 1995)