Leadership in Reality

An empirical study on a leaders behaviours using transformationaltransactional lens

Spring 2014

Table of contents:

1. Introduction

1.1 About The Leader

2. Methodology

2.1 Research Philosophy

2.2 Research Approach

2.3 Research Strategy

3. Interview Content Analysis

3.1 Theme #1: Motivation

3.2 Theme #2: Trust

3.3 Theme #3 Employee Development

4. Review of the applicable Literature

4.1 Idealised Influence

4.2 Inspirational Motivation

4.3 Intellectual Stimulation

4.4 Individualised Consideration

4.5 Contingent Reward

4.6 Management-By-Exception

5. Conclusion

10

6. References

11

7. Appendix

Introduction

Leadership is arguably one of the most studied phenomena of social science (Day &
Antonakis, 2012). However, despite huge amount of research and conceptualizations on
leadership, there is still a huge gap between its theory and practice (Blair & Hunt, 1985;
Hanges et. al., 2004; Northouse, 2012). Hence, conducting an investigation of leadership
practice and comparing it with leadership theories is believed to yield interesting and useful
results. This paper investigates the leadership style of a manager in one of the most famous
fast-food franchises worldwide, Burger king. To achieve this, the manager of one of the
Burger king branches was interviewed. Then, the key themes and findings of the interview
were obtained and used in the comparison and contrast with the leadership theories. However,
since different leadership conceptualizations and categories are very vast in numbers, this
study focuses only on transactional-transformational and the five personality traits approach
of leadership. In this paper, first the setting in which the chosen leader operates is described.
Then, the methodology used for this study will be explained. Next, a brief report of the key
findings of the interview will be put forward. After that, these findings will be discussed in
terms of academic theories and concepts of leadership. Finally, a conclusion will be drawn,
summarizing the main points and findings this study.

About the Leader

The person interviewed is a supervisor and shift manager at one of the Burger King branches
in northeast area of England. She has been doing this job for 4 years and 2 years in this
particular branch. It must also be noted that its her first managerial job position she has ever
had. According to her, there is a team of 20 people under her supervision, working in both
production line and at the counter. Upon her request, her name will be remained anonymous
and therefore the initials L.M will be used throughout this paper. L.Ms job responsibilities
includes: Training the new staff and making sure that they have learned the skills necessary
for their jobs, monitoring staves performance and reporting the results to the head office,
managing and motivating staff to meet weekly sales targets assigned by the head office,
managing the supplies and purchases and auditing daily and weekly revenues. It also seemed
that she is a very friendly, and risible person which, considerably facilitated the interview
process.

Methodology:
2

In any type of study that makes use of empirical research, discussing methodology is
absolutely vital (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). Therefore, in this section, approaches and
techniques used in conducting the empirical research will be discussed.
Research philosophy
In the interviewing method, it is very important to enter the social world of the subject
(interviewee) and understand the world from their point of view (Saunders et. al, 2009). For
this, interpretivism philosophical approach was adopted due to its usefulness in providing
subjective meanings and motivating actions (Saunders et. al, 2009). Therefore, in
categorisation of the interview findings, the emphasis was more focused on the reality behind
the details and interpreting meaning of actions.
Research Approach
In the process of the research design, first, some general assumptions on leadership theories
were made from the related literature. Then, 10 to 15 main questions was designed as the
outline of interview. However, later in the interview, based on the flow of the conversation,
several other questions were improvised in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the
subject. The formation of assumptions prior to observation and making use of semi-structured
interview can be regarded as combination of deductive and inductive research approach.
Research Strategy
In adoption of the research strategy, the most important factor is whether the chosen strategy
will enable one to answer specific research question or not (Saunders et. al., 2009). Saunders
et. al. (2009) assert that grounded theory can be regarded as theory building through
combining inductive and deductive approaches. Moreover, while Suddaby (2006) mentions
that interviews could be very helpful in grounded theory strategy, he also states that grounded
theory is an interpretive process (Suddaby, 2006). In accordance with the arguments above,
and due to the nature of this studys subject, grounded theory was adopted as the research
strategy of this study.

Interview content Analysis

3

Content analysis (Thematic analysis) is a method used to obtain useful information from
interview transcript (Saunders et. al., 2009). In this study, those chunks of data that had
similar pattern or meaning were categorised into subthemes. Then, those subthemes that were
more relevant and related to each other was brought together forming the main themes. In this
section, the content of each emerged main theme will be discussed with indication of related
interview phrases.
Theme #1: Motivation:
In this analysis, motivation refers to all of those leaders behaviours that inspires the followers
providing an incentive to work harder, more efficiently, or with a higher quality. Motivation
factor was formed of 3 key subthemes namely: Being a role model, encouraging teamwork
and collaboration, and creating competition.
According to the interview findings, the leader does her best to be a role model for her
followers by taking actions such as attending work everyday earlier than anyone else and
leaving after everyone else left (please refer to interview transcript statement A1). Other
behaviours showing the leaders attempt to be a role model can be seen when she states that in
certain situations, she goes out of the office and starts working along with her crew (A2) or
when she states that sometimes when she realizes one of her crew is not doing their job
properly, she does that job to show them how it is done (A3). All the aforementioned
behaviours show that the leader provides a good model to follow.
Another subtheme leading to motivation is believed to be encouraging teamwork and
collaboration between the followers. The clues that enlighten us about such behaviours are:
she looks for people who are able to help and collaborate with other colleagues (A4), and
blaming both team members in conflict situations between them (A5).
The last subtheme in motivation factor is creating competition amongst followers. It should be
noted that although creating competition might look as the opposite of teamwork, however,
they do not have any contradictions since teamwork is created for achieving organizational
goals but competition has more individualistic drives. L.M creates competition through
implementing a points system ranging from 1 to 13 based on staves performance (A6) and by
fostering competition culture throughout the organisation (A7).
Theme #2: Trust:
4

In this analysis, trust is viewed as a shared value between both the leader and the follower
meaning that the leaders trust in followers and followers trust in leader are positively
affected by each other. There are 2 key subthemes generated that are believed to demonstrate
trust: the leaders trust-inspiring behaviours, and leaders perceived trust (sense of felt trust).
L.M shows her trust in her followers and hence believes this trust will enable her crew to trust
in her as well. She believes that she is able to communicate effectively with her followers
(A8), and she also openly communicates the goals and decisions of the organisation with her
staff (A9). Having this clear and effective communications is believed to build trust between
the leader and her followers. In another part she states: If I think Im wrong, I just tell them
that I was wrong and accept it to make them feel better. So If I make a mistake, I go to them
and say: yeah that was my fault, I admit it, and Im sorry (A10), She also says: I accept their
[followers] apologies easily. L.M believes that this accepting and admitting to her mistakes
and forgiveness builds trust in her followers. In addition to the mentioned behaviours, other
codes from the interview transcript such as: being transparent and honest with followers
(A11), being friendly (A12) and same as followers (A13), and empowering followers by
asking their input and involving them in decision making processes (A14) are all example of
behaviours that is believed to build trust.

In addition to all the aforementioned attitudes she has to build trust, there are other certain
subthemes that show L.Ms perceived trust. In a part of interview she compares herself with
previous managers in the same branch and based on the stories that the staff tell her and her
own observations and comparisons she believes that the staff have high levels of trust in her
(A15). In another part she mentioned that she believes that staff are comfortable with her and
open up and talk to her easily without any distress and this is another reason why she feels she
has gained followers trust (A16).
Theme #3 Employee Development:
The term Employee Development is very broad. Therefore it is necessary to clarify its
definition in this study. Employee development is a name given to the theme that contains
patterns that show behaviours leading to improvement of staff performance and their
development as individuals. This theme includes three subthemes namely: Training staff,
punishment mechanisms, and employees monitoring and assessments systems.
5

In the interview, there are a few instances that L.M talks about Training the staff. Although
she is not in charge of recruitment of the staff but she believes that providing a right and
appropriate training will make the recruited staff able to learn and therefore perform
effectively (A17). In another part she mentions that the main and initial action to change the
undesirable behaviours in an employee is additional and personalized training (A18). L.Ms
emphasis on training along with other codes shows that she highly cares about staves
performance improvement and development.
The second subtheme leading to employees development is punishment mechanisms used by
the leader. Although L.M states that there is no official and systematic reward and punishment
schemes, in some parts of her speech obvious punishing behaviours could be seen. According
to the transcript, there is a warning system to warn employees upon their mistakes and wrong
behaviours (A19) and obviously, repeated warnings will be followed up by punishments.
There is another instance when the interviewee says as an example, if an employee shows up
late, then she might not let him/her go for a lunch break (A20). This, clearly, is another
punishment system that will lead to modification of the followers bad habits and behaviours
and therefore, improvement of their performance.
The last and the third subtheme, is believed to be monitoring and assessment systems used by
the leader. Behaviours such as observing and assessing staves performance and reporting it to
head office (A21), having points systems grading staves performance and reviewing them if
necessary (A22), and direct observations through CCTV cameras placed inside the store
(A23) are all examples of monitoring and assessment of employees performance by the
leader.

* Due to the word count restrictions only some of the subthemes and patterns were mentioned
in this part. All other patterns belonging to subthemes are available in the interview transcript
enclosed in appendix part.

Review of the applicable literature:

In this chapter, the main findings discussed in last section, will be explained through
comparison and contrast with relevant leadership theories. Since there are different
frameworks explaining certain behaviours in leadership, this paper will only focus on
transformational-transactional leadership approach.
Transformational-Transactional Leadership
Introduction
The concept of transformational leadership initially developed by Burns (1978). In the Burns
(1978) work, four main factors were introduced as the key elements of transformational
leadership: Idealized Influence, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation, and
Individualized Consideration. However, later, Bass (1985) mentioned that transformational
and transactional leadership should be viewed as continuum and therefore some researchers
used a mixture of transformational and transactional scales in their studies (Bass 1985;
Podsakoff et. al., 1990). In this study in addition to the four key elements of transformational
leadership stated earlier, contingent reward and management-by-exception will be used in
order to gain a more thorough understanding of the studied leaders behaviours.
1. Idealised Influence:
According to Bass (1998) idealised influence is those attributes of leaders when
transformational leaders shift goals away from personal safety and security toward
achievement, self-actualization, and the greater good (p. 41). Being a role model for the
followers can therefore, be considered as one of the elements of idealised influence. As
mentioned earlier in the analysis part, the leader acts as a role model in different ways and
tries to motivate followers this way. This influence can also be directed through fostering
teamwork and collaboration which could be seen in several parts of the interview transcript.
Day & Antonakis (2012) mention other attributes of a leader having idealised influence such
as confidence, vision and purpose, and considering ethical and moral implications of their
decisions (p.265). Although based on the interview it seems that L.M has ethical and moral
considerations in her decisions, but there no signs of vision or confidence was spotted in her
leadership approach. Apart from the possibility that the leader might lack these attributes, Day
& Antonakis (2012) assert that items such as powerfulness or confidence are too general and
not measurable.
2. Inspirational Motivation:
7

Inspirational motivation could be mistaken with idealised influence. The main difference is
inspirational motivation focuses more on the ability of the transformational leader to articulate
a vision and motivate followers to reach ambitious goals (Northouse, 2007). In the analysis,
no existence of such behaviours was seen. This can be explained through the nature of the
organisation the leader operates in. One possibility, for this, could be that as Bass (1985) says,
inspirational motivation factor utilizes non-intellectual, emotional virtues however, the
followers job in the studied organisation, is very low emotional involvement and formulating
a vision for an organisation with almost no long-term goals seems to be impossible.
3. Intellectual Stimulation:
As it is obvious from its name, intellectual stimulation are those types of leaders behaviours
that logically challenges the employees. This stimulation can be done through involving them
in decision-making and problem solving processes (Bass, 1999). As reflected in the Trust
theme in last chapter, the interviewed leader engages followers in decision-making processes,
and asks for their opinion and input. This shows that L.M intellectually stimulates her
followers to some extent.
4. Individualised Consideration:
Bass and Avolio (1994) state that a transformational leader should create a helpful and caring
environment where the followers express their individual needs. This can be achieved through
actions such as coaching and counseling followers, maintaining frequent contact with them,
and helping them to self-actualize (Day & Antonakis, 2012). In L.Ms case, in employees
development section, it was noted that L.M pays a remarkable attention to staff training and in
some cases, personalized and extra training. Also, in Trust theme, it was mentioned that the
leader listens to her followers and also has maintained a good relationship that has made
followers comfortable to open up and express their opinions and feelings. These qualities can
be translated into the mentioned necessary attributes of the Individualised consideration.
5. Contingent Reward
Contingent reward is an exchange process where the leader offers rewards in return of
achieving desired outcomes from followers (Bass, 1985). Although the interviewed leader
highlighted that in her leadership system there is no reward system like extra pays and the
like, nevertheless the agreement made between the leader and her followers on the wage they
8

receive for each hour that they work, can be considered as a transactional, contingent reward
behaviour.
6. Management-By-Exception
The second aspect of transformational leadership is management-by-exception factor.
According to Bass (1998), in management-by-exception, leader watches for abnormalities
within the workforce. Management-by-exception was classified into two components: active
and passive (Hater & Bass, 1988). Active form is when the leader watches carefully for errors
and makes adjustments while in passive form, the leader only intervenes after mistakes and
problems occurred (Hater & Bass, 1988). According to the analysis, the interviewed leader
utilizes both active and passive form of management-by-exception. The subthemes and
patterns leading us to her active form, can be seen in employee development theme, in
employee assessment and monitor subtheme, where the leader claims using points system to
rate and review employees performance, she is actively watching for errors and deviations
from norms. On the other hand, in the same theme, in punishment mechanisms subtheme, the
analysis shows that beside points system, the leader has implemented a warning system what
warns employees who make mistakes.

In general, The three main themes emerged from the analyzing of interview, motivation, trust,
and employee development, are all either main components of transformational leadership or
they are highly correlated with transformational behaviours and their outcomes. However, all
of the three main themes affect each other and in cases like trust and motivation, they even
overlap.

Conclusion
In this study, the leadership style of a leader in one of the fast-food branches was analysed and
evaluated through transformational leadership theory. The empirical research was
9

implemented by utilisation of in-depth interview. The findings were categorised, and themed
into three main themes of motivational, Trust-establishing, and employee developmental
behaviours. One of the main findings of this research project is that in spite of all the effort
and consideration one put in categorisation of social behaviours, due to complexity and
mutual outcomes of these behaviours, they overlap. Therefore, all the classifications and
conceptualisations one makes are only different lenses we use to look at these behaviours and
not the actuality.
An inevitable fact is that the leadership theories are formed based on the qualities and
characteristics of real-life leaders. However, it is impossible to find a leader possessing all the
attributes and able to perfectly excel in all the leadership aspects. The same rule applies for
the leader interviewed in this study. Although the studied leader showed several
transformational and transactional qualities, nevertheless she lacked most of the attributes
highlighted in the theories.

References
Bass, B. M. (1985) Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press.
10

Bass, B. M. (1998) Transformational leadership: Industrial, military, and educational impact,

Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Bass, B. M. (1999) Two decades of research and development in transformational
leadership, European journal of work and organizational psychology, 8(1): 9-32.
Blair, J. D. & Hunt, J. G. (1985). A research agenda for leadership on the future battlefield. In
J. G. Hunt, & J. D. Blair (Eds.), Leadership on the future battlefield (pp. 271317).
Washington, DC: Pergamon, Brasseys.
Burns, J. M. (1978) Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.
Day, D.V. Antonakis, J. (2012) The Nature of Leadership, 2nd edition, Sage publications.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. (2000). Qualitative research. Thousand Oaks ua.
Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V. (2004). Culture, leadership, and
organizations (pp. 9-28). R. J. House (Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hater, J. J. & Bass, B. M. (1988) Superiors evaluations and subordinates perceptions of
transformational and transactional leadership, Journal of Applied Psychology, 73: 695-702.
Northouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership: Theory and practice. London: Sage Publications.
Podsakoff, P. M. Mackenzie, S. B. Moorman, R. H. & Fetter, R. (1990) Transformational
leader behaviours, and their effects on followers' trust in leader, satisfaction and organisational
citizenship behaviours, Leadership Quaterly, 1 (2).
Saunders, M. Lewis, P. Thornhill, A. (2009) Research Methods for Business, 5th edition,
Pearson Education limited: Essex.
Suddaby, R. (2006) From the editors: What grounded theory is not, Academy of
Management Journal, 49(4): 633-642

11

12