Introduction
The oil and gas field in Oman is a very vivid market as there is a high competition occurring there in addition to the competition of oil market in the whole Gulf area which makes any company working in that field tries hard to reach competitive advantage. Focusing on human resource management can be a good way to reach competitive advantage through employees who are a major asset for any business organization to invest in. According to Alhassan et al, (2014), leadership has great effect on the staff performance which affects the organization's productivity as they saw that the use of the different leadership styles can leave big impacts on the organization's productivity according to different factors and conditions.
Leadership can be used to motivate employees and guide them for helping the organization raise its performance through improving the performance of employees, retaining them and reducing their turnover levels. There are different leadership styles that can be properly used for producing the best productivity the organization can reach.
The current proposal is discussing how leadership styles can affect the organization productivity; it presents some different leadership styles and their effect on productivity focusing on the transformational leadership style and declaring its role and impact on improving the organization's productivity. The research proposal is based upon a case study of Oman Oil Company SAOC which is a big oil company in Oman.
Background of SAOC
Oman Oil Company S.A.O.C is a government commercial company that the Omani government possesses. The company was established to be a part of the energy sector in Oman as incorporation in 1996 and it has business inside Oman and outside it. The company's projects are related to energy and other relevant sectors; its business is greatly participating in helping and strengthening the economy of Oman through business with both local and international companies.
The company is working in many fields related to oil sector such as petrochemicals as the company has shares in about five petrochemicals companies; three in Oman and two outside it. The company has big investments as it has shares in Germanic and Spain companies in addition to the investments of the company in Oman and its contribution to the Omani economy.
The company was established in 2000 and it was a closed joint stock company as it included Gas Holding and the Ministry of Oil of Oman with 80% and 20% shares respectively.
The company has a vision of providing high quality products for its customers and ensuring safety and security for all stakeholders as well as ensuring the profit and benefit for all shareholders.
The company business includes transmitting and distributing natural gas as it owns a big network of natural gas pipelines with stations for gas supply and for gas compression and the company also provides its customers with project management services in the pipelines constructing.
Research questions
The research is tackling the following questions for dealing with the effect of leadership style on the organization's productivity:
- What are the different leadership styles and how they affect organization's productivity?
- What is the most proper leadership style suggested for SAOC and why?
- How can the organization make full use of the transformational leadership style to improve productivity? Can it be mixed with other styles? How?
- What is the impact of implementing transformational leadership style in the organization?
Research objectives
The following are the objectives of the research:
-Identify the impact and effect of different leadership styles on organization's productivity.
-Identify the most proper leadership styles to be followed in order to improve and raise organization's productivity.
-Discussing the different leadership characteristics to affect productivity.
-Discussing the leadership practices that can improve and raise the organization's productivity and others that can negatively affect productivity.
Research contribution
The current research is prepared for supporting the human resource management of SAOC organization and raise the employees' performance for the purposes of improving and supporting the organization's productivity and profitability in addition to provide it with clearer vision for a developed leadership strategy that adopts creativity and innovation for having better productivity regarding both quality and quantity. The research is shedding the light on the different leadership styles; their weaknesses and strengths in addition to suggesting one leadership style to be followed by the organization in order to improve its current productivity. The research is investigating some leadership practices and relevant factors that may affect productivity of the business organization.
Chapter two
Literature review
Leadership styles and its effect on organization's productivity.
Castro, (2013) referred to a relationship between the leadership styles and the organizational productivity; they discussed different leadership styles such as the transformational, transactional and laissez free leadership. Bhatti et al, (2012) discussed other leadership styles such as the autocratic and democratic leadership styles and they investigated their impact on employees' job satisfaction which leads to higher productivity. Ofei, Puni and Okoe, (2014) discussed the effect of leadership style on the performance of firms as they defined leadership as the process that involves many practices by a person or more to influence others and guide them for working to achieve certain goals and to reach certain results.
Profit is a major request that shareholders have and it is directly associated with productivity; business organizations try to make full use of their resources in order to increase productivity and in turn profits. Among these resources are the human resources that are considered major assets and to use them properly, effective leaders are needed. According to Alhassan et al, (2014) leaders can affect the employees and inspire them to raise productivity when they follow the proper leadership style. Anbazhagan and Kotur(2014)referred to leadership styles and focused on choosing the proper leadership style in order to raise productivity according to the organization's general strategy, policy and value; they referred to studies that proved that autocratic leadership styles can negatively affect employees' productivity as these styles don't give employees a space for being engaged within decision making processes as well as they reduce the levels of communication between employees and leaders which reduces employees' capabilities for providing creative and innovative ideas that are able to increase productivity and thus profits. Choi, (2007)explained how democratic leadership can raise productivity through providing better strategic plans made by more creative leaders who are able to identify the talents of their employees and direct them towards achieving the organizational goals by being a model that motivates others and communicating the organizational values and goals with employees easily.
Masi and Cooke, (2000) discussed the effect of transformational leadership on empowering of employees which can lead to higher productivity and can improve the current level of organizational creativity. They compared it to the transactional leadership style focusing on the differences between them and on how the leader can mix between the two leadership styles to raise productivity of the business organization as there are situations where the leader should be transactional which means to take decisions by the leaders only without reference to employees such in difficult times where time is limited and the leader has to take decisions quickly or when employees are not able to provide creative suggestions.
Many authors discussed the impact of leadership styles on the employees and how this affects productivity; They suggest that the employees' outcome is highly affected with the way leaders communicate with them. Among those authors is Fasola, Adeyemi and Olowe, (2013) as they investigated how different leadership styles affect employees' job satisfaction, organizational commitment and behaviors; they discussed two leadership styles which are the transactional and transformational leadership styles and they focused on leaders' roles in motivating employees and how important is that role as when leaders fail in meeting employees' expectations and in motivating them, employees' performance is affected and it may decline which is reflected on the organizational performance or may lead to problems such as employees' turnover that affects the stability and reputation of the organization as well as productivity. According to Awamleh, Evans and Mahate, (2005), transactional leaders can be effective if leaders motivate their followers using social exchange methods such as rewards and praises, they added that the leader follower exchange can be effective when the leaders are having excellent agendas that are based on the values of the organization and they have leadership behaviors that bear the vision and goals of the organization and can be transmitted to employees in order to increase productivity through the employees' behaviors that should work for the welfare of the organization as employees will be executing the policy of the organization following their leaders. The leadership style is said to determine leaders' behaviors that are reflected on the members of his team and being a manager doesn't mean the manager is a leader as the leader should be a model, a guide, an inspiring figure and a person who is trustworthy by the followers and if these conditions aren't found in a leader, then he is a manager only. Leadership gives the organization the opportunity to develop the potentials of its employees as wise leaders are those who are able to realize the needs of their employees, work hard to satisfy them, understand the employees by communicating effectively with them and train the employees to be leaders themselves.
Ejere and Abasilim, (2015) discussed transactional leadership versus transformational leadership style and they referred to the transactional leadership style as being only managerial that focuses on missions of supervising, organizing and promoting the team members through a leader who is a tool for rewarding or punishing the team members according to their work and performance and according to the profits and level of productivity of the organization; they stated that the transformational leadership style is preferred to the transactional as the later style focuses more on faults and mistakes of employees which makes them very sensitive and only following orders and this may decrease their abilities to be creative and innovative which affects the level of productivity of the organization, They added that this style of leadership can be useful in emergencies, crisis or when there are projects that are needed to be done according to a specific fashion because transactional leaders don't concentrate on thinking but they otherwise give much interest to monitoring employees and making sure their work is done as asked and on the needed time; it is also considers the team members as followers and don't engage them within processes such as decision making and focuses on quantity rather than quality of performance which can affect productivity quality, superiority and uniqueness.
Transformational Leadership style
Transformational leadership is proved to improve the productivity of business organizations as it is mainly connected with personal outcomes of employees; Bushra, Usman and Naveed, (2011) discussed the impact of implementing transformational leadership style to improve productivity of business organizations in addition to improving the organizational outcomes. Mohamed, Zeaud and Batayneh(2011) discussed how high productivity can be gained when leaders are transformational; they explained that transformational leaders are those leaders who work for achieving changes within the organization through employees as they motivate employees for being creative and focus on employees' engagement and empowerment for raising their morale and job satisfaction and they stressed on the importance of leading for organizational change which is meant for raising and improving productivity. Hall et al, (2012) investigated how leaders can be transformational and raise communication levels within the organization as they explained that staff performance is improved by effective communication that helps leaders understand the demands of employees, build supportive relationships with them and train them to raise their effectiveness and help them be good leaders as a part of plans for empowering them and engaging them in all the tasks and missions of the organization as when employees are well engaged, they are more retained in the organization and do their best to raise and improve its productivity. Stweart, (2006) referred to the studies of Buns, (1978) as he first defined transformational leadership to be a style of leadership when leaders encourage their followers to have raised morale, better beliefs and higher motivation and coalition with the values and goals of the organization. He referred to four main elements involved within transformational leadership which are charismatic role modeling, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation, and intellectual stimulation and he focuses on the importance of understanding each element of the four by leaders in order to reach effectiveness in productivity by following transformational leadership. Sabir, Javed and Chaudhry, (2012) explained how transformational leadership can provide better solutions for organizational problems as it focuses on updating technological methods used within the organization as well as training employees on the latest trends of business; they also added that transformational leadership provides a work environment that is less stressful and bearing better coordination and business relationships between employees and each other as well as between employees and leaders. Baralt et al, (2009) discussed how transformational leaders are able to build trust relationships with employees which makes it easy for them to communicate the organizational goals and values to employees and motivate them to achieve the organizational goals using creative thinking methods.
Emami et al, (2010) reported that transformational leaders are able to motivate employees for following specific organizational behaviors through the leaders' resultant behaviors that are meant to bring in positive results and better achievement levels that are related to the outputs of the organization and this can improve the quality and quality of production; they mentioned how performance beyond expectation can be reached when the transformational leadership is applied as this technique of leadership can raise the creativity and innovation levels of employees by empowering them and engaging them in decision making processes and this is proved to make employees more self-confidence and try to use their talents to provide better suggestions and solutions for the different organizational problems. Barbuto, (2005) discussed the charismatic effect of transformational leaders on employees as he explained that the transformational leaders have an idealized influence and they are characterized with the inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation they leave on employees as this is able to raise the effectiveness of employees by following the leaders who are their role models with a value and a vision of presenting high efficient productivity that can improve the organization position in the market and provide new opportunities for the organization locally and internationally.
Transformational leaders are able to empower employees for doing what is better for the organization as they are guides and advisors for the team members, they encourage team work, cooperation and communication among the team members as well as respecting employees' ideas, they are also pushing employees towards success via using critical thinking and achieving better results regarding productivity and profitability. Thamrin, (2012) referred to some weakness regarding transformational leadership style including the misuse of power by leader, time wasting and the possibility of having poor agendas. Friedman and Langbert, (2000) discussed how transformational leadership can support the organizational commitment and ensures employees' loyalty and focuses on sustainability in all its practices; they referred that transformational leadership can raise the employees' readiness to work and provide their creative ideas to the organization and this can improve the current practices used for production and promise with new future practices that are able to improve and support productivity of the organization. Haider and Riaz, (2010) showed how some leadership styles that don't consider employees' job satisfaction can lead to high turnover rates as low job satisfaction makes employees quit for better jobs where they can work in a better work environment and where they can be trained and promoted; they reported that this negatively affects production and leads to losing talented employees who are supposed to improve productivity. This was affirmed by Odumeru and Ogbonna, (2013) as they affirmed that leadership styles such as transformational leadership can be effective in raising motivation in the work environment which retain talented employees and turn them to be a part of the organization with high loyalty and plans for increasing and improving productivity. Waqas et al, (2013) discussed how organization's success can be gained through the practices and implementations of transformational leadership as they referred to how transformational leaders are distributing tasks fairly, providing training programs for each employee equally and opportunities are provided without discrimination. Timothy et al, (2011) as well as Ponce et al, (2006)agreed that employees are asset and they need to be invested in by effective leaders who are able to invest them and increase productivity by choosing the most effective evidence based practice and implementations and apply them within the business organization to get the changes needed for having better production and better reputation for the organization in the market as high productivity can tell that the organization is working well and making good use of its resources and allocating them properly especially its human resources who are assets to be invested.
Transformational leadership is a method which affects business organizations' management in a way that can improve their strategy and help them reach competitiveness because it depends on transforming process and applying change in leadership. This style of leadership supports business in achieving its objectives and making more profits. In order to be a distinguished leader, you ought to use all available elements that lead to best results. To be a leader is to be able to determine weak points and strong ones in business. Transformational leaders are often defined as powerful, smart and ambitious. The way to add creative ideas to the stuff is called transformational leadership too. (Gill et al, 2011) The main role of the transformational leader is to improve the standard of team work and to let employees reach high performance in short time. It is necessary to concentrate on helping all members in the company to think and to be different by the transformational leaders. Transformational leaders are seeking for conveying an obvious vision of targets and goals of business according to teamwork ability. (Tafvelin, 2013)
Aspects of transformational leadership
Many authors discussed the different aspects of transformational leadership and there is a number of common features for the transformational leader as follows:
1-caring about psychological side for workers and giving them positive energy.
2-concentrating on upgrading the ethical level of the stuff.
3-defining the most important targets to start with.
4-encouraging workers to be moral matured.
5-making the common good as a priority.
6-promoting team management skills. (Sahgal and Pathak, 2007)
Dimensions of transformational leadership
Transformational leadership is composed of five dimensions; they are idealized influence including attribute and behavior, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualized consideration. Idealized influence refers to the degree of leaders' perception to be a perfect role model as this means how far leaders are liked, followed, respected, and trusted by their followers who are able to identify their leaders and follow them as their models. There are two main forms for the idealized influence which are the idealized influence attribute as in this form leaders are respected and trusted by their followers and the idealized influence behavior as in this form leaders are also respected and trusted but they also have a sacrifice behavior that makes them leave many of their rights and needs for the sake of improving the outcomes of their work groups. The intellectual stimulation refers to how far the leader can stimulate the followers in a way that can help them be more innovative and provide creative ideas and solutions; it depends on a principle of solving traditional organizational problems with creative innovative solutions as it depends on thinking out of the box. Inspirational motivation describes the leaders' ability in stating visions that can encourage, motivate, urge and attract the followers and reflects how far leaders are able to reflect a positive image of the future to the followers and making them more optimistic, more self confident and more supported. Inspirational motivation also depends on motivating the followers and inspiring them by adding challenges and meaning to the work they are performing. Individualized consideration refers to how leaders support their followers and encourage them by different coaching techniques and the leaders here have to master listening skills as they should be able to realize the needs of the followers, their conflicts, reasons for their problems and complaints as well as their ambitions and then to support their abilities and develop them by different challenges and problems that need creative solutions. Brown, (2008)
Characteristics of transformational leaders
The results of studies proved that there are five personality traits should be presented in each transformational leader. Presence of these elements has an effective role in forming the character of transformational leader as follows:
1-flexibility in dealing with employees and respecting the followers.
3-emotinal communication between leader and follower has a positive effect on followers the thing which makes them more flexible to gain experience. It gives an impression about the nature of work in the organization.
4- Agreeableness is not a major element of transformational leadership; however it is ought to be found in each transformational leader.
5-conscientiousness means to achieve the most degree of productivity through distributing tasks according to the ability of each one in the organization. (Piccolo and Colquitt, 2006)
Traits of Transformational Leaders
Hamilton, (2010) discussed two types of leadership which are the transactional and transformational leadership styles and he referred to the traits of the leader in each type. He discussed the transformational leader traits and characteristics as he mentioned that a transformational leader has special influence on his followers coming from the charismatic character he masters and this is usually used by transformational leaders for encouraging followers to achieve the required goals and to bear a specific vision and organizational value. Bono and Judge, (2004) confirmed this adding that a transformational leader has an extraordinary effect on his followers that helps them fulfill different missions perfectly and more effectively.
Lievens et al, (1997) discussed the traits of transformational leaders referring to the main dimensions of transformational leadership such as the individualized consideration that is found in each transformational leader and they affirmed that this trait or dimension can give the transformational leader personal attention and enables him to treat each employee individually and be able to communicate with them and advise them to maintain growth requirements carefully. Transformational leaders are imaginative, introspective, resourceful and have personal insights; a transformational leaders are able to see future visions for their organizations and their expectations are based on real evidence based researches, analysis and facts. (Jandagh et al, 2009)
McGuire and Hutchings, (2007) also discussed the portrait of a transformational leader and explained that he is a creative individual who has high readiness for openness and high intellectual stimulation. He added that a transformational leader is characterized with having agreeableness that reflects his tendency for being gentle, kind, understanding, cooperative and trustworthy.
Influence of Transformational Leaders on Followers
Many researchers have discussed the importance of management influence on employees in business organizations as according to Mariano et al, (2011) management support is very important as one of the organizational factors that make the business organization succeed and reach competitiveness as effective management and leadership can influence entrepreneurship greatly. Mariano et al, (2011) discussed this issue confirming that a transformational leadership influence on followers is more than other leadership styles as it is found to be positively related to employees' behaviors as employees in teams under a transformational leader produce better and present better work outcomes than others who are lead by transactional leaders or any other types of leadership.
The positive relationship between the transformational leaders and their followers affect their performance and raise their morale as this relationship improves the followers' psychological and spiritual conditions. (Smith, 2015)
Givens, (2008) discussed how transformational leaders empower their followers and provide them with a good supportive work environment and a safe climate for working in and this leaves positive impact on the followers and making them have positive ambitions and dreams about their careers that can be achieved with the help and guidance of their leader. Transformational leaders engage employees and help them have specific self-efficacy as they are convinced that employees' engagement and empowerment can influence employees to add to the welfare of the organization.
Transformational leadership effectiveness as compared to other leadership styles
Leadership types are numerous such as Transformational, Transactional, Laissez faire, Servant, Quiet, Situational, and Participative leadership. Each organization chooses the suitable style of leadership which can help in achieving its targets. Authors think that currently the most common and effective one is transformational leadership as it is achieving great results in many organizations the thing that makes it preferable one. Transformational leadership will be discussed with other styles referring to the differences between them in details. (Jandagh et al, 2009)
Transactional leadership
Transactional leader follows rules, meets followers' needs, motivates them by appealing their interests, faults, punishes the responsible for it, and clarifies positives actions to gain best outcomes. Transformational leader is creative, works out of the box, makes a big change in the policy of the organization, uses morals to reach objectives ideally, encourages followers by applying their interests at first, and takes in consideration individual differences for each follower to help him in innovation that creates progress for the organization. (Ekelund et al, 2006)
Laissez-faire leadership
Laissez-faire leadership is the style of leadership that makes followers fully free to behave in work, takes decisions belong to work without asking the leader. Laissez-faire needs aspects to be effective and successful such as /highly skilled and educated followers with a big experience, brings outside experts to help in missions, followers have loyalty to work on their responsibility successfully, and it is not preferable to be used if the leader does not give impression or feedback regularly to the stuff. It is remarkable that style achieves low rate of productivity among members. (McCleskey, 2014)
Situational leadership
Situational leadership is a dynamic style depends on the nature of work as a changeable aspect in choosing style of leadership, as it is clear that there is no one best type in leadership. Because of that the leader is needed to be flexible to the extent which makes him to be able to change style of leadership in order to keep peace with different types of followers and situations. (McCleskey, 2014)
Servant leadership
Servant leadership leaders' are not searching for personal glory, it focuses on serving and enriching moral sides. (Stone et al, 2003)
Problems face transformational leaders in business organization
In large business organizations, it is necessary to know the most suitable way for managing work in order to upgrade the standard of business achieving best results. Field of business is full of many obstacles and difficulties; these things which prevent the way of success, some points and factors that may face any business leadership will be discussed as well as methods for dealing with these problems, the role of leader towards followers and his responsibility towards work too. (Crawford, 2016)
The transformational leadership combines with behavior theories and inspirational concept, in contrary with transactional leader who depends on directory and supervision on the staff in order to achieve targets by showing the plan and the defined role for each one. (Pryor et al, 2008)
Followers prefer stable system on work this is another problem with his followers is how to pursue them with the concept of change ,the role of transformational leader is to concentrate on acceptance and importance of the change rather than the avoidance of it ,there are five things have to be dealt with to make the change especially on people who leads the system of change or the big companies which do the strategy of change, those five steps are, anger, depression, bargaining, denial, and finally acceptance. The first reaction that followers do is to resist the storm of change as they are used to do their work using traditional strategy in achieving targets of business and they feel more secured and safe, they are also hate to be in risk, change means to them the unknown. (Crawford, 2016)
Applying transformational leadership in business organizations to increase productivity
Many authors defined leadership and it can be referred to as "a process of influencing the behaviors of individuals or groups with the purpose of achieving specific goals and objectives." Transformational leadership is a type of leadership that proved to be associated with higher productivity as many authors such as Chou et al, (2013) who discussed this and confirmed that productivity is high when the business organization applies transformational leadership; this is due to many reasons such as the impact left by transformational leadership on many different areas related to the business as being discussed below.
Dionne et al, (2004) discussed the relationship between transformational leadership and team performance as it is found that transformational leadership can improve team performance due to the result of the trust found between the leader and his followers who are the team members as transformational leaders focuses on broadening the goals of followers, pushing them and encouraging them to work better and exceed expectations. Transformational leaders also focus on empowering the followers and giving them more self confidence by engaging them in decision making processes, suggesting new innovated ideas and add new identity to the work they are doing which results in raised productivity, more participation and better self confidence. Transformational leaders prefer to work in a supportive comfortable work environment where their followers can feel satisfied, relaxed, self confidence and have high morale and these conditions affect their ability to produce better work outcomes and feel loyal to the organization they are working for by having a sense of belonging to such good work environment that encourage them to present higher productivity levels.
Transformational leadership has a positive effect on the creative output levels that the team members generate as according to Krishna, (2011) transformational leaders are able to urge the team members to work together and to facilitate the interdependent work operations among the members of work groups which helps in establishing a sense of cognitive trust and maintaining positive feelings and attitudes within each other in the groups as this is resulting from the trust impact generated by the transformational leaders. Transformational leadership also supports teams efficacy which is defined by Zhang, Cao and Tjosvold, (2011) as the shared beliefs among the members of a team about their ability to perform different tasks and it can result from the trust and confidence built within a team by their leader. The transformational leaders are supposed to be the most leaders who build collective efficacy within their team members as according to Zhang, Cao and Tjosvold, (2011) the transformational leaders are able to leave a strong impact on the team members through the inspirational motivation that can help the team members have stronger efficacy as the team transformational leader can establish the cognitive trust within the team by exploring the team members' abilities and focusing on them and guiding them to perform their tasks on the best ways that can save time and effort and present the best business outcomes.
Transformational leaders have certain behaviors they engage in and they represent a model to be followed especially when matters are related to work and productivity because they focus on making employees enthusiastic to work based on their methods for recognizing employees, supporting them and being fair with them all as a transformational leader shouldn't differentiate between employees on any bases such as sex, race or other discriminating factors. Transformational leaders also give much interest to social values in order to manage stress and conflict times and this can help in constructing the collective confidence and helps the group be stronger and be more productive; social values enables the transformational leader to make the group work as one family with a father guiding them towards achieving change and successful outcomes. Transformational leadership is proved to bring in productivity excellence in many business organizations. Many studies proved that transformational leadership is directly connected to measures of productivity. (Covey, 2014)
In a study conducted by O’Toole, (2012) about other studies made in the USA; it was found that in some American mines, workers suffered the underground environment as the work conditions were difficult added to bureaucracy which raised in reduced work capacity and low productivity as workers resisted the rules and instructions and began to make conflicts about many things.
Transformational leadership and conflict management
Transformational leaders focus on two main elements to develop in order to manage and reduce conflicts which are ensuring a safe social context to work in and satisfying employees' needs. The social context can be supported by coordinating the work, distributing tasks fairly and effectively, making discussions with team members, assigning jobs based on real skills and experiences, managing time effectively and giving interest to social occasions and different events that can raise employees' morale and make them feel home such as parties, recognition meetings and open discussions. A leader follower relationship is different in the transformational leadership model; a transformational leader doesn't build an exchange relationship with employees to receive work instead of rewards but a transformational leader builds a better type relationship based on understanding, encouraging and motivating employees to develop themselves and develop the business at the same time, he offers a purpose for employees that attracts their self-interest and raises their self confidence for the good of themselves, the group and the whole organization. A transformational leader has a vision of being near employees, understanding their sufferings and problems in order to enable them face the different stresses of the work environment and to be able to have good work and team behaviors that enable them to reduce their aggressive reactions and passive feelings towards each other. (Ayoko and Konrad, 2012)
The relationship between transformational leadership and emotional intelligence
Emotional Intelligence Definition
Emotional intelligence has been defined by many authors such as Barling, Slater and Kelloway, (2000) who referred to it as the ability to express emotion, perceive it and appraise it and it is the ability to express what the individuals feel and think and realize and identify emotions and regulate them in order to develop intellectual and emotional growth. Other authors have added to this definitions and others presented different ones as for example Lindebaum and Cartwright, (2010) defined it as an activity initiated by some individuals for stimulating the purposeful activities in others through altering the methods they follow to regard the world and others; it leaves a great impact on the beliefs of people and on their hearts, feelings and minds. A study by Modassir and Singh, (2008) examined the relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership as the study focused on realizing transformational leadership and how far it is related to emotional intelligence (EI) and the study found out that there is a positive relationship between both of them. Modassir and Singh, (2008) found out that the effective leadership should have two main competencies which are the ability for monitoring personal emotions of the leader and the ability for monitoring those of others.
Components of EI
Barling, Slater, and Kelloway (2000) discussed emotional intelligence and its components referring to five main characteristics which are understanding different emotions; realizing how to manage them; having emotional self-control, understanding and identifying others’ emotions and managing various relationships. Other authors such as Kumar, (2014) divided emotional intelligence into two main components which are personal competence and social competence as personal competence refers to how a person can maintain self awareness and self management for feelings and emotions as well as identifying the person's own strengths and weaknesses relevant to emotions and feelings and manage them effectively. Self management here refers to things such as adaptability, self awareness, emotional self control, honesty, being trustworthy, having the ability to learn, orient and be initiative and being optimistic. Social competence refers to the social awareness regarding feelings of others as realizing how others feel and react and it also means to understand the different attributes of others' feelings such as motivation, persuasion, conflict management and cooperation skills. Insight and empathy are both involved in the social awareness as the leader should understand the strengths and weaknesses of others, have political knowledge, have skills for managing conflicts and persuasiveness abilities. Social competence can be strengthened through observing others' feelings and reactions, analyzing others' behaviors and find out what behaviors can be effective in difficult situations. Modassir and Singh, (2008) referred to a number of competencies related to emotional intelligence that are divided into four major groups that can help understand people's feelings and emotions as the four groups are the self awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management.
Why EI is Important?
The importance of emotional intelligence refers to its ability to make people able to deal with different situations in a mature way and with high degrees of control on oneself and on others. It helps in understanding the different motives of others and their expected reactions in different situations. Barling, Slater and Kelloway, (2000)
EI and transformational leadership
The exploratory study conducted by Barling, Slater and Kelloway, (2000) also confirmed that positive relationship between EI and transformational leadership as it considered the transformational leaders to maintain the sense and ability to identify feelings and emotional conditions either those related to them or related to others and that they have to master the skills of expressing those feelings and use emotional knowledge as a tool for solving the different problems. Barling, Slater and Kelloway, (2000) explained that EI is positively related to transformational leadership but other leadership and management styles don't have such relationship with EI.
Hunt and Fitzgerald, (2013)explained that those leaders who are maintaining strong emotional intelligence with a higher component of realizing emotions have the ability to understand the real level followers expectations are to be raised. Harms and Crede, (2010) made their meta-analysis on the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership styles both transactional and transformational and they found that transformational leadership is the most related leadership style to emotional intelligence as its dimensions such as individualized consideration and inspirational motivation are directly correlated with the leaders' ability to identify and control emotions of themselves and of their followers and even others. Harms and Crede, (2010) added that the emotional intelligence elements such as self confidence, empathy and self awareness are forming the basic underpinnings of transformational leadership vision.
According to Hunt and Fitzgerals, (2013) emotional intelligence is considered a tool for recognizing the effective leaders and also a means for maintaining the effective leadership skills which make EI including competencies for transformational leadership. Lindebaum and Cartwright, (2010) reported that inspiring people is a difficult process that is considered a challenge to people's common assumptions and there should be a high degree of emotional intelligence to inspire them and enable them to perform better. Some authors such as Szekely et al, (2016) argue that the transformational leaders are able to make their followers leaders and enable them to identify and recognize their own leadership abilities and skills by using his emotional intelligence and building an emotion-laden relationship with the team members which makes a transformational leader an effective tool for making good use of individuals and identifying their talents to prepare them take leadership positions and roles that can lead to success and better work outcomes.
Recommended model of emotional intelligence and transformational leadership
There are different models of emotional intelligence and transformational leadership and based on the study of Polychroniou, (2009), the following EI model depends on the different areas relevant to emotional intelligence and t transformational leadership such as self awareness, motivation, empathy and social awareness and relate them to the traits of transformational leadership such as individual influence, individualized consideration and inspirational motivation. The model suggests that the effective leader can influence his followers through motivation techniques, individual personality and charisma. Figure 1 represents the model as follows:
Figure 1: EI Model
Advantages and challenges of transformational leadership implementation in business organizations
Transformational leadership is a leadership style that may have advantages and disadvantages as according to Birasnav et al, (2011) transformational leadership has many advantages such as raising the awareness of employees regarding their higher abilities and potentials through role modeling and verbalization; it also improves the development of the business organization by developing one of its most important assets which is its human resources as transformational leaders focus on developing their followers in order to build up their skills and abilities and make them gain more training and experiences in order to help them develop their performance and then the organizational performance can be developed and improved.
Criticism of transformational leadership
Lee, (2014) explained how authors who appraised transformational leadership also criticized it as a result of many real practices in different cases and organizations. He discussed how transformational leaders are seen as being great men and this may make them dictators; he gives an example which is the strong heroic basis of transformational leaders such as Hitler. Hitler was a transformational leadership under what is called pseudo-transformational leadership, he exploited the charismatic character he had as well as his emotional appeal negatively to control his followers and be unethical. This issue was also discussed by Hay, (2016) who discussed similar criticism on transformational leadership referring to power abuse and the moral values transmitting from leaders to their followers either in an intended way or not intended as he explained that a transformational leader who is really transformational can affect his followers' emotions greatly but what if his morals weren't positive? Hay, (2016) also referred to transformational leaders as aiming at getting the thoughts of people and refocusing them on certain goals and communal interests which tells that those transformational leaders don't consider the needs of others as their main interest but they try to make similar or mini models of themselves via the followers through affecting their minds and emotions and this is antidemocratic. Yet this opinion is very severe and may not be real.
Another criticism of transformational leadership model referring to its lacking clarity and suggests that it leads to finding ambiguity and difficulty in measuring and suggesting its effectiveness. (Northhouse, 2012)Some authors have suggested that the four dimensions of transformational leadership are overlapped and the terms used for them such as idealized influence and inspirational motivation are not suitable for referring to loosed expressions representing transformational leadership as they should be more specific representing the real job of transformational leadership. This can be a weak criticism as the dimensions are clear to a great extent and representing the transformational leadership. (Agrad, 2010).
Goodwin, (2013) presented a criticism for transformational leadership that states that it lacks countervailing interests' checks and balances and it also lacks control over transformational leaders as they can use their power freely and without strict observation as he confirmed that there should be a balanced system and plan that helps in making the transformational leader avoid oppression and dictatorship. Transformational leadership lacks moral rectitude as it may be applied for less-than-desirable social ends. This is referred to by many authors as the “dark side of charisma”. He mentioned some examples for negative transformational leadership examples such as Hitler and Charles Manson. He also mentioned the Rev Jim Jones, who led the great Jonestown suicide and became an example of a negative transformational leader representing the ‘dark side’ of transformational leadership. Yet these views forget important thing which is the real transformational leader has to apply change and transformations using values, morals, honesty, equity, fairness, human rights, justice and loyalty. There is another criticism for transformational leadership which is that transformational leadership deploy deontological ethics which may be different from other leadership styles ethical principles.
How to overcome the challenges and barriers face transformational leadership implementation
Laubscher, (2008) discussed the barriers facing transformational leadership implementation and he referred to some barriers such as the cultural diversity, not enough preparation for change, change resistance, the poor work environment, lack of communication between stakeholders, the shock occurring to some transformational leaders when others don't cooperate with them as expected and when the leaders are not real transforming or not ethical. He suggested that there should be solutions to face and overcome these challenges and barriers such as the following:
Preparing for applying transformational leadership
Inviting all stakeholders to recognize new leaders and their plans.
Applying control on transformational leaders using the organization's rules and board of directors.
Dividing teams for work and showing them the benefits of transformational leadership
Altering to different leadership styles when needed.
Benefits of transformational leadership for business organizations
Pawar, (2003) discussed transformational leadership and its benefits referring to its role in enhancing the development of corporate strategy and how this can improve the company's strategies. This was also discussed by Veríssimo and Lacerda, (2012) as they added that transformational leadership is beneficial for the business organization because it depends on developing its human resources and motivating them for improving their performance and the general organizational performance. Pawar, (2003)discussed the relationship of transformational leadership with societies and referred to its effect on economic societies and large business organization; he added that it sets inclusive goals that can improve the general performance of the business organization not only in the market but also in society. Veríssimo and Lacerda, (2012) stated that transformational leadership focuses on engaging stakeholders in the whole business process in a way that makes the organization unique and distinguished in society and communities. This refers to the role played by transformational leadership in addressing different parties and stakeholders involved in the business process and how transformational leadership can improve the supply chain work and other different relations with stakeholders. Brandt et al, (2016) discussed other benefits for transformational leadership to business organization as they discussed the effect of transformational leadership on profitability which is an issue that is very important for almost all business organizations; they explained that transformational leaders can radiate many different positive influences on the members of the organization who are those tools expecting to improve the profitability of the organization as transformational leadership encourages them to provide the innovative and creative ideas that can improve the company's profitability and competitive advantage in the market.
Tiri et al, (2015) discussed the benefits of transformational leadership to the business organization through adding shared values to team work and improving team performance; they added that transformational leadership is an ongoing process that focus on engaging leaders and followers into dialogues that raises the motivation and goals levels of both of them.
Transformational leadership and creativity
Authors have discussed transformational leadership and related it to creativity as according to Gumusluoglu and Ilsev, (2007) transformational leadership has a great impact on the creativity of employees on the individual level and on the organization's creativity. Gumusluoglu and Ilsev, (2007) explained that employees' creativity is associated with transformational leadership because it is associated with their perception and knowledge which are better management and addressed by transformational leaders.
Khan et al, (2009) discussed the relationship between the organizational innovation and transformational leadership as they discussed the charismatic role modeling of transformational leadership and how this can help the leader in building a one to one relationship with the followers which enables him understand the differences between employees in many things such as abilities, needs, skills and aspirations and then to address each employee individually to realize his talents and develop them in order to let the employees' mind be accustomed on thinking positively and analyzing different experiences and then innovate in them or create sole unique new ideas and suggestions that can help the employee be well rewarded and promoted and at the same time help the organization develop its products and services and reach success. Khan et al, (2009) explained how today's business world is following very advanced technologies and that the different changes in life, communication and industries made business organization competition is very high and this makes every business organization tries to find out new methods of coping with these changes and reaching competitiveness such as innovating in their products and services, in their promotion campaigns, in the business processes and in managing their human resources. (Hong, 2012)Samsung company tried to apply a hybrid leadership system that involves transformational leadership with traditional one and this helped in raising employees' abilities in innovating and at the same time keeps their rights and positions. It depended on applying transformations on its strategic planning and restructuring the group management and leadership to include transformations. (Jung, 2014) Another example is the transformational leader model of Apple company that was clear in Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs representing transformational leadership. Steinwart et al, (2014) report the frequency of transformational leadership characteristics that was clear in characterizations of Jobs in 2011. The company required jobs as a leader who has some characteristics of a transformational leader which are being creative, passionate, and visionary. The company also declared Jobs as an innovator, which is reflecting need for having innovative employees within the organization.
Slatten and Mehmetoglu, (2014) discussed transformational leaders' strong dedication that makes employees apply organizational change as they encourage innovations that can promote the level of different production and marketing strategies; top management openness can change the thinking process of employees and encourage them to be innovative as employees are in need for a leader who motivates them for being creative and appraise them for their creativity. Slatten and Mehmetoglu, (2014) claimed that organizational innovation is a successful determinant of the transformational leadership style as there is a direct relationship between innovation and transformational leadership that is increasing along with the degree of flexibility and motivation of transformational leaders.
The future of transformational leadership
Many authors have discussed the future of transformational leadership as some authors suggest that it is better to mix between transactional and transformational leadership styles currently in order to ensure better future for transformational leadership. Cardona, (2000) discussed how transformational leadership can be extended with transactional leadership into transcendental leadership that can include three leadership accomplishment levels which are the transactional, the transformational and the transcendental accomplishment. Cardona, (2000) suggests that future of leadership shouldn't depend on traditional theory of exchange relationships but to focus on better relationship between the leader and the followers as he confirmed that transformational leadership style require regarding for this relationship in order to focus more on the needs of the followers and giving them more space to express themselves away from the influence of the transformational leader. Liu, (2007) also discussed the three leadership styles transactional, transformational and transcendental suggesting that mixing the three theories may be the future of current preference to transformational leadership; he added that charismatic leadership styles such as transformational leadership may not be favored in the future due to its being leader-centered limiting the characteristics of followers as a result of the strong impact of leaders as this in future may not be effective with future generations.
Transcendental leadership is suggested by many authors for future leadership and it can be referred to as a spiritual relational process that is applied in the postmodern spiritual workplace and transcendental leadership can be regarded by many authors and researchers as a field of inquiry if regarded within the whole context of workplace spirituality. (Gardiner, 2011)
In conclusion, it is important to refer to the importance of transformational leadership for the development of any organization especially business organizations because of many reasons such as the relationship between transformational leadership and productivity as researches and studies have proved that there is a positive relationship between productivity and transformational leadership because transformational leaders encourage their followers and motivate them for providing better levels of productivity and profitability. Transformational leaders have specific characteristics that make them distinguished and preferred over other leaders such as their inspiration, honesty, communication, motivation, the relationship they adapt with employees and their intention for innovation and creativity as well as their encouraging for employees to be creative and innovative. There are main dimensions for transformational leadership which are idealized influence including attribute and behavior, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualized consideration and they are very important to make a transformational leader able to guide his followers towards competitiveness. There is a strong influence for a transformational leader over his followers by the inspiration and communication he focuses on as this helps him realize and understand the needs of employees and then to meet them. Transformational leadership is preferred to be used than other leadership styles currently due to the great changes in the world and the need for innovation and creativity but some authors have found that it is better to mix it with other types based on the needs of the leader and the organization. There have been found some challenges and barriers to transformational leadership such as lack of communication, change resistance and others. Transformational leadership can be applied to increase productivity in the business organization as it affects the team performance and raise employees' morale which helps make them more efficient and more productive. Transformational leadership can be criticized due to the control of transformational leader on followers. This can be faced by altering between different leadership styles. The future of transformational leadership is expected to be optimistic because it depends on creativity and it is thought by many authors that transcendental leadership is the future of transformational leadership followed currently.
Chapter three
Research design and methodology
Williams, (2011)discussed how research methodology should be selected by the researcher in addition to choosing and forming the most suitable research questions and research objectives; he stated that each research requires following specific research methodology in order to reach conclusions relevant to the benefit from research. Passi and Mishra, (2004) discussed how research design should be selected in addition to its methodology and he referred to different methodologies including the qualitative and quantitative methods and he referred to the data analysis techniques such as questionnaires, surveys and interviews. The current research is following the qualitative approach depending on a case study about how to improve the leadership style of SAOC organization by investigating the effect of leadership styles on productivity as there is an interview discussing some important matters and issues related to leadership in SAOC, the effect on productivity and how it can be used to improve productivity including the impact of leadership style on the organization's productivity. These views are matching the views of Stenius et al, (2016) who discussed the qualitative research methodology explaining techniques for getting information and preparing data in addition to mentioning practices of other researchers and how they collected data according to the needed conditions and measurements of research methodologies; They stated that there should be a time period for planning and collecting data as well as analyzing them and trying to answer the research questions using the research tools such as analysis and design. Kallet, (2004) discussed the differences between the quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and stressed the importance of selecting the proper tools for getting data in each method as he referred to the qualitative method and that the open ended questions are more suitable for the case studies to be made according to this method, he added that this method gives the researcher a great opportunity for setting many suggestions and proposition for solving the research problem or answering the question which enables other researchers to build up on the research conclusions and results for future works. Sofaer, (2002) investigated many different methods for getting information and collecting data in the qualitative method and he focused on the cognitive interviewing that depends on making effective interviews with relevant characters and getting information from them about different situations and matters regarding the research and that can provide answers for the research's questions and he referred that the method can test different issues within the research. The current research is following the qualitative approach through the cognitive interviewing technique using a case study as it is based upon being an interpretative research that depends on validity of the information of the case study in order to get as much information as possible about the SAOC organization and to try to understand the nature of leadership style currently used within SAOC and how far it affects the organization's productivity in addition to find new leadership style to improve productivity in the organization. According to Andrade, (2009), the validity of the research can be reached when the interpretative method is used because it focuses on internal and external validity and its reliability depends on positivism according to the design of the case study.
Research data
This research is being made using a tool for data collection which is a cognitive interview because it is the best tool for getting as much as possible information as the interview is targeting different employees within the organization SAOC including employees and leaders asking them about the techniques and practices leaders follow and the most dominant leadership style followed by them in the organization in order to analyze the data and reach suitable conclusions and recommendations. Questions in the interview are varied between open and closed questions in order to get diversified answers with relevant information that can be suitable for the research, all questions are necessary to be answered by the interviewees in order to get cognitive information about the issues relevant to the matters and issues of leadership styles. Questions are clear and are addressing certain points based on the research questions and objectives. According to Kalinowski et al, (2010), qualitative research is good for identifying the depth of the problem and provides more descriptions for the issue.
Participants' selection is based upon choosing all employees' levels as well as leaders in different departments including the human resource department in SAOC, interviews are made face to face using written paper sheets and personal data of participants are either declared or kept secret according to their preferences regarding their own personal information. The language used is the English language, times of executing the interviews are pre set with the company's administration and employees and leaders are acknowledged with the interview times. There will be also audio records for the interviews for additional referencing for the information and to help in analyzing the data correctly. In case employees don't have time for face to face interviews, the interviews paper sheets are send to them to be made by hand or they can be sent by emails to be done electronically and sent by mail.
Population and Sampling
Population are all from the Omani society working at SAOC which is a great Omani organization for oil and gas production, it has over than 2000 employees working for achieving the organization's goals in providing good refinery services as well as petrochemical and gas products for Omani people. (OPRIC, 2013). The interview is targeting the different departments in the organization using employees from all levels beginning with managers and bossed to employees in different positions. The interview is to be presented for 100 participants including 80 employees and 20 managers, the 80 employees will be interviewed via e mails because of their big number but leaders are to be interviewed face to face due to the limit number of them.
Data Collection
Data is going to be collected according to the research needs, objectives and questions as the interview is set to cover such parts. Data can be gained from the interviews' answers; the research will focus on multi methods approach as the interviews are not the only data resource but they will be minor resources such as the reports from the organization and observations. There will be approval for the collection protocol according to the appendixes of the research.
Chapter four
Findings and analysis
Gill, Stewart and Chadwick, (2008)discussed the different common procedures for data analysis according to qualitative analysis and the tools used for it; they stated the uniqueness and usefulness of such method. They added that this method supports the researcher with enough information about the topic and the relevant issues to the research as well as their abilities to ensure enough answers for the research questions. They referred to it as a systematic approach that enables the researcher to compare between different opinions and data got from different tools and this helps reach conclusions easily and also helps in making recommendations that are evidence based. They also reported that qualitative analysis of data has three main simultaneous activities' stages which are limiting the data by selecting and summarizing it to have clear information and the second stage includes data displaying and setting rules for conclusions that will be used in the research and the third stage which is making the conclusions and making sure they are based upon valid information. Valid conclusions are ensuring valid recommendations that can be helpful for additional researches. In this research, the previous steps are going to be implemented after data collection as analysis is to be done according to the stages mentioned here. The information from the interviews will be gathered and analyzed then to be rearranged in tables after filtering and then to be displayed in graphs. There will be quotes from the interviews to be added to the tables and graphs. Data analysis can be made also by Excel sheets in order to make the data clearer and easier for use. The conclusions will be available for any researchers whowant to use it in more future researches.
Research ethics considerations
Stern, (1997) discussed the importance of research ethics and declared that research ethics should be regarded by the researcher who is going to write a research because this ensures the validity and liability of the research to be safely applied on real life experiments. He confirmed that research ethics should be well known for the researcher before starting the research as the research is dealing with human participants or animal and should keep the rights of those participants and ethics of research involve this. Ethics of research ensure advice and directions for the research when needed. The current research is giving much interest for research ethics such as respecting the participants in the interview, keeping information as came in the interview, keeping personal information on high levels of security and privacy and ensuring sourcing the different information found in the research exactly and according to the research methodology. This research proposal is based on providing evidence based information about leadership styles and transformational leadership. Ethics include informing participants with all the required information about the research, its objectives and why it is conducted and ethics also include informing participants with appointments to make the interviews and discussing the matter with them. The participants' consent is gained from them before starting any procedures with them such as sending e mails or making face to face interviews or getting information by any other means. Time is arranged and discussed with them before making the interviews and they have an idea about the nature of the interview and the questions before making it. The participants are also having an idea about the research background and the benefits gained by the organization from it. Participants are told that their identity and privacy are ensured, there are breaks participants take to prepare themselves for the interviews.Participants are told that the research has no risky experiments or experiences and they have the right to make comments or objections on any question of the interview. Honesty is a major rule that the research is obliged to follow and objectivity is another rule involved within the research ethics. Participants provide written consents for sharing in the interview and for answering the questions in the language they prefer if English is not suitable to them. Confidentiality and intellectual property are ensured when sharing in the current research proposal in order to make it valid and confidential for other scientific research.
