2. CUERPO
1.2. Principios del Nuevo Proceso Penal Peruano
Leadership broadly refers to influencing people in an organisation, from the perspectives of goal setting, behaviour involved in achieving goals, group maintenance, and the overall organisational culture (Yukl, 1989).
Burns (1978) and Bass (1985) distinguished transformational and transactional leadership. Transactional leadership provides rewards and punishments to encourage performance and thus bases the leader/worker relationship, essentially, on economic transactions. Transactional leadership relies on close connections between goal achievement and rewards or punishments. In contrast, transformational leadership refers to leadership by aligning employee aspirations with the strategic goals of the organisation, resulting in employees who are intrinsically motivated to pursue such goals. In transformational leadership, leaders provide support, encouragement, and developmental experiences, as well as lead by example, by visibly demonstrating the leaders’ commitment to pursuing the strategic goals of the organisation through the leaders’ own behaviour, thus influencing the attitudes and assumptions of the organisation’s members and building organisation-wide commitment for the organisation’s mission, objectives, and strategies (Yukl, 1989).
Bass and Avolio (1994) characterised transformational leadership as composed of four unique but interrelated behavioural sub-dimensions: inspirational motivation (communicating an appealing vision, using symbols to focus followers’ effort, and modelling appropriate behaviours), intellectual simulation (increasing followers’ awareness of problems and influencing followers to view problems from a new perspective and promoting creativity and innovation), idealised influence (arousing strong follower emotions and identification with the leader), and individualised consideration (providing support, encouragement, coaching, and mentoring to individual followers). Bass and Avolio synthesized the prior research on leadership in terms of distinguishing the role of transformational leadership, and concluded that leaders who rely on these four behaviours are able to influence the followers’ values and norms, promote positive changes in both personal and group behaviour, and help the followers to improve their performance beyond the followers’ own expectations and beyond what is stipulated by explicit employment agreements.
Transactional leaders exert influence by setting goals, providing feedback, and issuing rewards and recognition for followers’ accomplishments (Bass, 1985). Transactional leadership may be effective in changing followers’ behaviour for as long as the link between the behaviour and the rewards or punishments can be established and is maintained. Transactional leadership, however, does not encourage followers to engage in behaviours that promote the organisational goals in ways that are not visible to the management, and thus is limited at mobilizing creativity.
A number of studies have considered the effects of transformational and transactional leadership on technology acceptance. Schepers and Wetzels (2005) studied the effects of transformational and transactional leadership on perceived usefulness. Based on a survey of after-sales service employees in the Netherlands, they found that transformational (but not transactional) leadership affected the employee perceptions of an innovative information system. Employees led via encouragement rather than coercion were more likely to view the system as useful because the employees realized that the system contributed to the organisation’s goals and the employees cared about these goals. In a similar vein, Neufeld, Dong, and Higgins (2007), based on a study of employee acceptance of enterprise information systems at large manufacturing companies in Canada, found that charisma (an aspect of transformational leadership) positively affects several determinants of system acceptance (the system performance and effort expectancy, subjective norm, and facilitating conditions—the perception of the ability of the organisation to facilitate the use of the system). Similarly, Prybutok, Zhang, and Ryan (2008), in a US based study of e- government in city government, found that transformational leadership affected the employee perceptions of IT quality (system quality, information quality, and service quality). Once again, in the climate of transformational leadership organizational members are more likely to see value in information systems.
Both transformational leadership and transactional leadership were included as determinants of knowledge acquisition behavioural traits by Politis (2001). Politis conducted a survey at a large high technology manufacturing organisation in Australia. He found that both transformational and transactional leadership affected knowledge acquisition. Politis also included self-management leader behaviour, consideration leader behaviour, and initiating structure leader behaviour The results of the study are
summarized in Table 2-3. The study by Politis demonstrated that different approaches to leadership affect knowledge acquisition behaviour in different ways.
Table 2-3 Management Behaviour Types and Their Effects on Knowledge Acquisition (compiled based on Politis, 2001, and Mykytyn, Mykytyn, and Raja, 1994)
Leadership style Knowledge acquisition attributes
a
affected
Self-management Encourage self-observation, self-goal setting, self-reinforcement (teams recognise and reinforce their performance), self-criticism, self-expectation, rehearsal (practice a task before performing it) (Manz & Sims, 1986)
Communication/problem
understanding, personal traits, organisation
Transformational Charisma, individual consideration, intellectual stimulation (Bass, 1985).
Negotiation
Transactional Contingent reward, management-by-
exception (the leader avoids giving directions and allows followers to follow conventional ways if goals are met) (Bass, 1985).
Personal traits, organisation
Consideration Mutual trust and respect for ideas and feelings (Robbins, Bergman, & Stagg, 1997)
No effects
Initiating structure Directing tasks, “getting people to work hard”, planning, explicitly scheduling work activities, “ruling with an iron hand”. (Daft & Lane, 2008, p. 46).
Communication/problem
understanding, personal traits, organisation, negotiation
a
Knowledge acquisition attributes (based on Mykytyn, Mykytyn, and Raja, 1994, p. 99, which Politis, 2001, cited): communication/problem understanding referred to “interviewing, listening, sensitivity, open-minded, probing, conceptualise, rational thinker, hindsight”; negotiation referred to “diplomacy, patience, cooperation”; personal traits referred to “empathy, sense of humour, tolerant, amiable”; and organisation referred to “leadership, speaking, writing, management, knowledge”.
Politis (2001) did not publish the questionnaire that he used. However, based on a citation provided by Politis, one would assume that the questionnaire defined knowledge acquisition skills based on the lists of attributes provided by Mykytyn, Mykytyn, and Raja
(1994). I found the precise meaning of some of the attributes (such as “management” as an attribute of organisation) not entirely clear even after carefully reading both of the articles, and the respondents were likely to have had similar problems. The overall gist, however, was clear enough.
Further examples of relevant prior studies are given in sections 3.4.2.3, 3.5.2.3, 3.4.2.4, and 3.5.2.4. Overall, the prior studies of the effects of different styles of leadership on technology acceptance and on knowledge management behaviours suggest that leadership is likely to affect KMS success in healthcare. One might expect that both transformational and transactional leadership explicitly directed to promote constructive knowledge management behaviours would influence the behaviour of health practitioners. Nonetheless, one would expect that because of the complexity, specialization, and context- specificity of healthcare related knowledge, the potential of transactional leadership may be limited. Leaders may be unable to verify whether followers shared all of their knowledge or took into account knowledge shared by others. The behaviour of highly qualified professionals acting, to a considerable degree, autonomously (as is the case in healthcare) with respect to knowledge sharing is difficult to observe and assess. Therefore, the ability of the leaders to establish links between the behaviour and the rewards (or punishments), which are necessary for effective transactional leaderships, may be rather limited. Nonetheless, some of the relevant behaviours are visible and explicit (for example, one cannot tell if health practitioners contribute all of their knowledge to the best of their ability, but one can judge the contributions superficially, based on the number and on the volume of postings). Thus, the effects of both transactional and transformational leadership are worth investigating.