Transactional Leadership Advantages: A Comprehensive Report

This report examines the advantages of transactional leadership, a managerial style developed by Max Weber that emphasizes supervision, performance, and a reward-based relationship between employers and employees. It highlights how this style, which relies on contingent rewards, clear task instructions, and performance monitoring, can be particularly effective in workplaces requiring clarity, minimal errors, and adherence to procedures, such as clinical settings. The report discusses how transactional leaders create a positive work environment, provide clear directions, and address errors, while acknowledging potential limitations such as suppressing individual growth and creativity. It emphasizes how transactional leadership facilitates employee goal achievement, supports human resource management, and fosters innovation, performance improvement, job satisfaction, and overall work efficiency. The report also references relevant studies and figures to illustrate how transactional leaders motivate employees through intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, ultimately contributing to a productive and satisfied workforce.

Student name
INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION(S) |
Transactional leadership
ADVANTAGES

Advantages of transactional leadership style
The transactional leadership approach was developed by Max Weber in the year 1947.
Transactional leadership is one of the managerial leadership kinds that focuses upon the
supervision and performance of employees in a workplace setting. Accordingly, this
leadership style emphasizes a relationship between employer and employees that is grounded
upon rewards and targets. This means, the leaders consider more on employees' performance
in the workplace and are rewarded with financial and nonfinancial rewards besides
promotions based on target achieved and performance made. According to Haq & Chandio
(2017), transactional leadership style believes that motivation in employees can be initiated
by rewards and punishments where every employee needs to obey the supervisor or the
leader's instructions so that the work performed can be monitored and controlled
appropriately.
A study made by Fletcher, Friedman, & Piedimonte (2019) finds that transactional
leadership is specifically useful when motivation and guidance are required by employees for
task completion that requires clarity of work with minimal to no error. Since this style
involves a contingent reward behavior approach like provision of resources for conducting
enhanced performance, it enables management of exception in the workplace through
performance control and error rectification. Here, resources include social factors like praise
and kind gesture. Intangible resources may include pay leave, bonuses or promotion. Though
such kind of leadership may not prove effective in workplaces where creativity and
innovation are required, it most suitable for clinical leadership where many rules and
procedures are involved for performing operations in several spheres (Fletcher, Friedman, &
Piedimonte, 2019).

Figure: Transactional Leader’s role in organizational performance (Haq & Chandio,
2017)
Apart from the advantages shown in the above figure, transactional leaders create a
positive work environment by giving appropriate directions to the employees for performing
the task precisely besides putting in personal efforts to rectify any human error or mistakes. A
commanding and assertive leader always finds a transactional leadership style the most
favorable for managing their workplace, however, as the transactional leader has a strong
influence on the subordinates, the individual growth and development of subordinates can get
restrained. Since individuals become accustomed to performing only what is been told to
them, their capability to think individually remains out of the box and generally suppressed.
Nevertheless, transactional leaders can produce a well-obedient workforce by building a
collaboration with the subordinates that ascertains wider organizational or work objectives
are been met.
Transactional leaders can facilitate employees to meet their obligations and targets
which further helps human resource managers in predicting employee performance levels for

job designing purposes. Therefore, innovation skills, performance improvement, job
satisfaction, and work efficiency can be accomplished by a workplace that applies the
transactional leadership approach. Such leaders exchange processes between themselves and
the followers more often by giving significance to the barter process between followers'
needs and needs of the leaders. According to Maslow's need hierarchy, if the lower needs of
individuals are achieved, they tend to move forward in needs line (Devie, Semuel, & Siagian,
2015). Since transactional leaders accommodate the needs of followers by giving intrinsic
and extrinsic rewards, they encourage the workforce to behave productively and positively,
thereby providing the workplace with a motivated, encouraged and satisfied workforce.

References
Devie, Semuel, H., & Siagian, H. (2015). The Different Impact between Transformational
Leadership and Transactional Leadership on Competitive Advantage. Journal of
Progressive Research in Social Sciences, 3(1), 146-153.
Fletcher, K. A., Friedman, A., & Piedimonte, G. (2019). Transformational and Transactional
Leadership in Healthcare Seen Through the Lens of Pediatrics. The Journal of
Pediatrics, 204, 7-9.
Haq, S., & Chandio, J. A. (2017). Transactional Leadership and its Impact on the
Organizational Performance: A Critical Analysis. International Journal of Trend in
Scientific Research and Development, 2(1), 135-139.