Components of Transformational and Transactional Leadership: Predicting Academic Performance Beyond and Below Expectations

Abstract

This study investigates the combined effects of transformational and transactional leadership on higher-education students’ performance both beyond and below students’ historic scholastic achievement. Instructors’ intellectual stimulation behaviors, a component of transformational leadership, and their preemptive corrective oversight in the form of management by exception active, a component of transactional leadership, are correlated with grades students earned in a course. Findings suggest that beyond a student’s near-past academic performance, an instructor’s transformational and transactional behaviors influence a student’s performance in a class either positively or negatively, respectively. Instructors’ transformational and transactional leader behaviors also had opposing effects on grades after controlling for near-past academic performance. These findings underscore the need for instructors to engage in a combination of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors to support students’ pursuit of high academic achievement.