Establishing Relationship between Transformational Leadership, Individuals, and Organizational Performance through Trust
Task Description
For this assignment, you will be asked to prepare a proposal detailing a proposed project similar/related to the one you have just completed for BUSN20019. The proposal is to be written in professional report format and contains the following:
- a short, preliminary literature review that places your project within the context of your profession.
- a focused research aim, and at least one research question; and
- a research plan, including: an overview of your proposed methods of data collection and data analysis; Gantt chart schedule; and clear presentation of data sources.
The required length for this report is 1,750 words (+/- 10%), excluding preliminaries, reference list and appendices. You are required to include at least 10 suitable high-quality peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles.
Introduction:
Employees and their commitment to the organization are very crucial. Employees can be motivated if they have trust and confidence in leadership and organizational policies. Employees’ satisfaction and performance directly affect organizational performance, and satisfaction and performance may not be there separately. The proposed research seeks to consider the role of the trust of employees in the organizational context. Research evidence confirms that the economic performance of companies relies on trustworthy employees. Leadership styles, workplace safety, and empowerment of leaders are variables related to the trust of employees in an organization. It is a crucial business managerial issue because it has been an untapped area of research. The style of leadership and the role of trust in the style are two variables important for an organization (Birasnav, Rangnekar, & Dalpati, 2011).
The trust of employees plays a critical role in the relationship. Some recent studies have emphasized that the role of trust needs to be elaborated and researched further. Therefore, this proposed research is going to research both variables of transformational leadership and trust and their relationship with each other. The variable of workplace safety is also relevant because trust increases the chance of safety at the workplace. To be specific, trust ensures commitment and performance of employees. Transformational leadership has the ability to increase the level of trust of employees in an organization. This style has been found to be very effective and contributing to the performance of individuals and the organization as well. Therefore, these variables have been studied so that managerial issues may be studied in organizations.
Aims and Objectives/ Research Questions:
The research has taken the perspective of employees where their satisfaction and commitment to the organization have been emphasized. Companies have been facing issues about employee satisfaction, turnover, and cooperation. Companies need to ensure that employees have trust in the actions of leaders. In light of this need, research aim and research questions have been included in the following.
Aim:
The proposed research aims to find the relationship between trust and transformational leadership. The aim is focused and clear and has been set based on the literature review and research gap. The research evidence confirms that it is a somewhat untapped field to study trust as a variable of a direct relationship with transformational leadership.
Research Questions:
- What is the role of trust in the relationship of transformational leadership in an organizational context?
- Why is trust essential for employees and the organization?
- How does trust solve managerial issues so that employees can benefit from the transformational style of leadership?
Preliminary Critical Literature Review:
Trust in the organizational context is linked with the leadership style used. An ethical or transformational leadership style is considered helpful in increasing the level of trust among employees. The role of ethical or transformational leadership gives rise to many useful and productive attributes in the workplace. For instance, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and moral identity are outcomes of ethical and transformational leadership styles. An ethical or transformational leader is the honest one, has integrity, care, visibility, the tendency of altruism, and support for proper rights (von Thiele Schwarz, Hasson, & Tafvelin, 2016). There is an emphasis on research that transformational leadership style is the most effective for the enhancement of knowledge capital and human resource performance. Research studies have combined employee behavior, leadership style, and trust in one group, which shows that they are interlinked. These variables in this group are interlinked and interconnected with each other (Le, et al., 2018). There is a positive relationship between ethical or transformational leadership behavior, ethical work environment, employee performance, and organizational trust (Birasnav, Rangnekar, & Dalpati, 2011). The role of ethical or transformational leadership style and resulting ethical work climate led to employee performance, but the role of employee trust is critical in this relationship.
The study of trust for the motivation of employees has been done in many research studies. A subordinate or employee cooperation requires some steps from management. There is a tension between trust and control and psychological mechanisms for both, i.e., trust and control are opposing each other. Leadership has a role in building trust, and they ensure employee safety as well. Trust also increases the level of workplace safety (Long, Ghazali, Rasli, & Heng, 2012). Transformational and empowering leadership behaviors are very important in the enhancement of workplace safety. It has been noted that employee trust acts as a mediating role in relationships with different variables. It means that variables are positively related to each other through trust, and it increases the significance of trust in an organization. It also increases the fact that trust should be considered at central importance because it enables different relationships possible (Javed, Rawwas, Khandai, Shahid, & Tayyeb, 2018).
Transformational leadership, empowering employees and leaders, and employees’ safety are positively related though direct and indirect relationships. The transformational leadership style aligns its priorities with human resources and strategy of the organization (Muchiri, McMurray, Nkhoma, & Pham, 2019). It does not achieve organizational results at the expense of employees’ trust. Employee safety behaviors are also ensured through this leadership style. Empowerment of employees and leaders is crucial for employee and organizational performance. The role of trust is inevitable to have a positive relationship between these variables. Therefore, the proposed research has emphasized trust in an organizational context (Mullen, Kelloway, & Teed, 2017).
Trust is a psychological state, which is about the positive expectations of employees in policy or action. Various research studies have found that trust is an essential variable in various relationships in an organization. It causes the effectiveness of a leader. It affects organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, organizational justice, intention to quit, effective communication, goal commitment, and psychological contracts positively. Burke et al. (2007) proposed that trust in a leader is the reason for different attributes at organizational, relational, and individual levels. Various relational aspects include behavioral consistency, sharing, and deregulation of control, demonstration of concern, and communication (Amundsen & Martinsen, 2015). However, it has been proposed, and research using these variables and the role of trust may be pursued. Various studies on trust show that employees express trust in their leader when they have positive expectations for the future. They consider leaders’ safety intentions and behavior positive in the future. They also feel workplace safety as a result. The role of trust in the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational as well as employee performance is the topic worth to be taken for research (Conchie & Donald, 2009).
Organization of the Project:
The proposed research would be like research having an introduction, literature review, a methodology to be used in the study, discussion and findings, and conclusion. The project would follow the elements included in the research plan in the following section. The variables of the study would be studied, and the relationship between the variables would be reached in the research project.
Research Plan:
The research would be quantitative, and it would be based on secondary data. Quantitative research through secondary data explores a phenomenon or issue that requires detailed information. The quantitative research methods are useful because they end at generalized results; however, the role of qualitative data is its ability of more depth and critical analysis (Dannels, 2018). The variables of the study are transformational leadership style and trust. The model of the research has been included at the end of the literature review. Transformational leadership would be the independent variable, and trust is the dependent variable. The proposal and preliminary literature review on the topic have identified a research gap. According to the research gap, it is found that the role of trust is significant and central because, without it, there is no positive relationship between transformational leadership and its obligations. Workplace safety and other relational aspects are also essential, and they are linked to organizational and individual performance. However, they may only be useful if there is trust between employees and the management of an organization. Transformational leadership style has the ability to explore trust in an organization.
The quantitative nature of the study would help know how transformational leadership can cause and ensure trust in an organization. There may be quantitative research methods by using questionnaire as data collection tool. But it is not effective because it lacks exploratory research. The purpose of selection of the topic is to have a deeper and detailed look into the topic. Therefore, it would obtain secondary data from other published articles and research studies on the topic. It does not happen without the use of secondary data-based quantitative research. Quantitative research methods may have limitations because they focus on establishing relationships or noting impact of one variable on the other. As a result of quantitative research methodology, secondary sources would be consulted about variables in the study. It would help the research to come up with objectives and research questions at the beginning of this proposal. The feasibility of the project in light of the Gantt chart and timeframe should also be there so that it may be a practical project. The following section has a project timeframe.
Conclusion:
The proposal concludes that employees and their relevant managerial issues are vital in an organization. The performance of employees and the organization has always been an essential managerial issue because it is the goal of any business. Leadership plays a crucial role in ensuring performance. Transformational leadership has been very effective in enhancing the performance of employees and organizations. However, it is only possible when there is trust among employees regarding management and its actions. Moreover, there is a lack of research to establish a relationship between trust and transformational leadership. In this paper, the timeframe and methodology for research have been included. Its purpose is to pursue the plan of action of the research. The proposed research has taken the issue of transformational leadership and its ability to cause trust among employees. There are a range of activities and positive results from transformational leadership. Trust is one of them, and it is usually studied as mediating variable.
Feasibility of the Project within Timeframe:
Following is the timeframe of activities to be carried out in the proposed project. The main activities of the proposed project are approval of the proposal, introduction, literature review, development of a conceptual model based on literature review and variables, review of secondary sources, results and their analysis, discussion and findings, and conclusion. The project activity would be spanned for nine weeks. Literature review and review of secondary sources are important activities in the timeframe. Change in activities and their allocated time would be based on the emerging requirements at that time.
References
Amundsen, S., & Martinsen, Ø. L. (2015). Linking empowering leadership to job satisfaction, work effort, and creativity: The role of self-leadership and psychological empowerment. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 22(3), 304-323.
Birasnav, M., Rangnekar, S., & Dalpati, A. (2011). Transformational leadership and human capital benefits: The role of knowledge management. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 32(2), 106-126.
Conchie, S. M., & Donald, I. J. (2009). The moderating role of safety-specific trust on the relation between safety-specific leadership and safety citizenship behaviors. Journal of occupational health psychology, 14(2), 137.
Dannels, S. A. (2018). Research design. The reviewer’s guide to quantitative methods in the social sciences, 402-416.
Javed, B., Rawwas, M. Y., Khandai, S., Shahid, K., & Tayyeb, H. H. (2018). Ethical leadership, trust in leader and creativity: The mediated mechanism and an interacting effect. Journal of Management & Organization, 24(3), 388-405.
Le, B. P., Lei, H., Phouvong, S., Than, T. S., Nguyen, T. M., & Gong, J. (2018). Self-efficacy and optimism mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge sharing. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 46(11), 1833-1846.
Long, C. S., Ghazali, N. I., Rasli, A., & Heng, L. H. (2012). The relationship between Knowledge Sharing Culture and Innovation Capability: A proposed model. . Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research, 9(2), 9558-9562.
Muchiri, M. K., McMurray, A. J., Nkhoma, M., & Pham, H. C. (2019). How transformational and empowering leader behaviors enhance workplace safety: A review and research agenda. The Journal of Developing Areas, 53(1), 257-265.
Mullen, J., Kelloway, K., & Teed, M. (2017). Employer safety obligations, transformational leadership, and their interactive effects on employee safety performance. Safety Science, 91, 405-412.
von Thiele Schwarz, U., Hasson, H., & Tafvelin, S. (2016). Leadership training as an occupational health intervention: Improved safety and sustained productivity. Safety science, 81, 35-45.
