Transformational Leadership Education and Agency Perspectives in Business School Pedagogy: A Marriage of Inconvenience?

Abstract

We critique transformational leadership education in university business schools based on a literature review, a study of the websites of 21 leading business schools, and an analysis of two presentations to business school students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University by the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch. Our critique draws attention to the unresolved tension between two motivating ideas that underpin much teaching in business schools: collective interest ideas that permeate transformational leadership education; and self-interest ideas derived from agency theory. Transformational leadership tends to be depicted as a process by which leaders exert a 'top-down' influence over the activities of others, while simultaneously asserting that their organizations have a common purpose and pursue a collective interest. We highlight the risk that business schools are producing graduates who will attempt to appeal to common needs (guided by precepts of transformational leadership) but who will simultaneously enact contradictory performance management systems (guided by agency theory). We encourage business school educators in leadership to adopt approaches which are more critical, relational and reflexive. We suggest some general directions for an alternative leadership prospectus, based on followership, the promotion of critical upward communication within organizations, and the recognition of leadership as a contested, discursive and co-constructed phenomenon.

Teaching Leadership Critically: New Directions for Leadership Pedagogy

“…Many leadership programmes informed by these perspectives promise to turn students into inspirational leaders capable of impacting powerfully and positively on the world (Tourish et al, 2010). Yet, in practice, these high expectations are rarely achieved.…”

Flawed from the “Get-Go”: Lee Iacocca and the origins of transformational leadership

“…Tourish et al (2010) noted that TL and agency theory posed two contradictory views of corporate executives. Agency theory posited executives as motivated solely to maximize their own rewards.…”

The role of CEO (auto-) biographies in the dissemination of neo-ascetic leadership styles

“…Spector (2014) points to "the pedagogy offered in U.S. and U.K. MBA programmes" as essential to the hegemony of the transformational model, in particular its over-attribution and romanticization of leadership (366). Similarly, Tourish et al (2010) in an empirical examination of pedagogy and promotional materials of leading U.S. and U.K. business schools, point to the prominence of celebrity CEOs in this material, in particular their regular invitation of to make presentations to students and their presence in case study material. That the reading of CEO (auto-) biographies plays a key role in this institutional process of dissemination is almost certainly the case.…”