Transformational Leadership

Much contemporary theorizing in leadership studies incorporates ideas and concepts that, in one form or another, derive from James MacGregor Burns’s conceptualization of transforming leadership, which overhauled many traditional assumptions about the phenomenon. In particular, his formulation emphasized the moral and educative nature of the relationship between leaders and followers, which Burns believed was consistent with contemporary democratic norms. However, from the standpoint of a coherentist epistemological framework, critical examination of Burns’s account uncovers philosophical and technical difficulties with some of his central claims, including those upholding the theory’s democratic and educational credentials. Thus, to the extent that current formulations of leadership look to Burns’s theory as a source of ideas, similar problems are likely to carry over and manifest themselves in these accounts too, with implications for administrative practice, and its further development.