Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs demonstrates that most people are more likely to act when they expect rewards or fear punishment. Any social system is more effective when a hierarchy clearly exists. People who are hired to work, implicitly agree to heed all of their manager's instructions, and that is the main reason that subordinates are employed.
When rewarding a subordinate, a transactional leader must create a clear structure of what is required of said worker when following orders. Alongside rewards, there should be a well understood formal system of discipline in place, although not always talked about.
Discussing the agreement where the subordinate is given an income and other remuneration, and the company (and by inference the worker's supervisor) acquires power over the worker is handled early period of Transactional Leadership.
Employees will be punished for their failure if things do not go correctly, just as they would be rewarded for their successes. When a job is given to an employee by the Transactional Leader, the employee is fully accountable for its completion. This accountability applies whether or not the employee has the means or ability to finish the project.
Often the transactional leader will work under the expectation that if something isn't broke, don't fix it. In other words, if a principle is operating to expectations, it doesn't warrant notice. Along with this is the expectation that anything above expectations merits praise and rewarding, and anything below expectations needs corrective action.
Transactional Leadership has a 'telling style', as opposed to the 'selling style' Transformational Leadership has. Reward or punishment are the two outcomes that follow the performance.
Transactional Leadership leans more towards the management side when put on a Leadership vs. Management scale. Even though there is a lot of research that points out its flaws, Transactional Leadership is still used widely among many managers.
Behaviorist psychology pioneers B.F.Skinner and Pavlov used carefully conducted experiments on controlled populations in a laboratory setting when formulating their famous theories of Operant and Classical Conditioning. While these shed much light on human and animal behavior, they fall short of understanding man's behavior fully. This is because they rely upon a model of a rational man, whose simple drive towards reward is unclouded by complex social and emotional issues.
Practically speaking, Behaviorism sounds quite reasonable to keep up methodologies involving transactions, which in turn is armored by the supply-and-demand situation of much employment, chained with the results of greater demands, as the theory of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs suggests. When the demand for a skill outruns the supply, transaction leadership becomes insufficient, making other such approaches highly recommended.
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Date Published :
Mar 7 2008