According to Quinn, (1996) and Bass (2000), survival these days requires strong leaders who can transform all the old assumptions and stimulate new perspectives and explore new businesses in the business environment. Yukl (1989) and Covey (1990) have both suggested that it is the trust that is engendered by transformational leaders that creates the heightened levels of commitment and performance associated with transformational leadership. Since the past few years, transformations have been made in many manufacturing companies in Malaysia. There have been leaders who could enhance morale, motivation and performance of the followers with a variety of mechanisms by this transformational leadership, but how far would the impact of transformational leadership style change the followers towards their commitment and motivation in job performances remains unclear. In the wake of these recent changes, pertinent questions about the implementation of transformational leadership need to be addressed. Firstly, how far the transformational leadership could influenced the workers commitment and motivation in job performance for better outcomes. In the preliminary interviews conducted by the researcher in several manufacturing companies in Shah Alam, including Silver Bird Group Berhad and Fraser & Neave Holdings Berhad, most of the leaders of the companies were of the opinion that a dynamic leadership is important to achieve the objectives of the organization and the efficiency of their workers. In the context of this research, the approach to leadership should be to foster strong ties between the leadership with the behaviours of the subordinates including the trust, commitment and motivation towards the employee job performance.
One of the main problems that occur in the manufacturing companies these days is de-motivated employees who feel that they are not treated well by their leaders. To overcome this problem, it is important to measure how well the components of transformational leadership are able to predict the job performance in the manufacturing companies in Malaysia. During a preliminary interview researcher stated the employees in her organization are concerned about the leadership style that the leaders apply in their everyday works. According to her, if the leaders play an effective leadership style it will lead to an effective work by the employees and the company. In addition, it is imperative also to investigate which components of transformational leadership is the best predictor of the job performance in manufacturing company in Malaysia. In a research by Hatter and Bass (1988), they claimed that transformational leadership has increased the organization performances. While Barling, Moutinho and Kelloway (1998) said that leaders also have their own approach to attract the followers.
The objectives of this study were as follows:
1. To identify the strongest dimension of transformational leadership (Idealized influence, Inspirational motivation, Intellectual stimulation and Individual consideration) that gives impacts on the commitment and motivation in job performance.
2. To examine the relationship between the transformational leadership style (Idealized influence, Inspirational motivation, Intellectual stimulation and Individual consideration) towards the commitment and motivation in job performance.
3. To examine if trust moderates the relationship between transformational leadership (Idealized influence, Inspirational motivation, Intellectual stimulation and Individual consideration) and job performance (commitment and motivation).
3. LITERATURE REVIEW
3.1 Transformational Leadership
According to Bass and Avolio (1994), transformational leadership may be described in such an example where the person or individual could motivate and inspire employees by raising their awareness of the value of the tasks they perform and the importance of organizational goals, and by drawing on employees‟ intrinsic needs. Transformational leadership can be a motivator to guide their followers in doing the job thus helping them with the appropriate motivation to lead them in doing the work well. This statement is supported by Bass (1998) who indicated that transformational leadership is based on the connections between leaders and other employees as an effective transformational leader understands the needs and motivations of others and tries to help them reach their full potential. In addition, from the perspective of Malaysian leaders, the transformational leadership style is the most common practice compared to the other leadership styles. There is an evidence to confirm that, in general, Malaysian organizations are more active and perform better compared to those in other countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore (Tay, 2010). Transformational leaders can influence their followers to perform well in their jobs and bring along the respect and trust to their followers. This statement is supported by Mackenzie and Rich (2001) in their study which stated that trust is positively related to the core transformational leader behaviour, individualized support and high performance of the expectation. From the respect and trust, the followers will be motivated to give full commitments towards their jobs in the organization. This statement is supported by Flaherty and Pappas (2000) who said that, employee trust in their manager has been linked to the individual outcomes such as higher job satisfaction, productivity, and higher commitment to the organization. Furthermore, according to a study by Schneider and George (2011), the researchers found that in the transformational leadership practiced by the leaders, there is a positive relationship which affects the quality of commitment, job performance and intentions to stay longer in the organization. This idea is supported by Dowling (2007) who mentioned that, the transformational leaders tend to treat their followers with fairness, give a clear direction on what they want the followers to do and increase their confidence and interest by challenging the followers to look beyond their self-interest and expectation. In the transformational leadership, there are four dimensions known as 4 I‟s.: Idealized influence, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Simulation and Individual Consideration.
Ritz (2009) stated that transformation oriented leadership as well as the interactions of transformation oriented leadership and public service oriented motivation have positive relations to the achievement of job performance. This is supported by Dowling (2007) who stated that leaders who posses transformational leadership style influence individuals, namely the followers or the employees. This happens because these leaders emphasize a common sense of purpose and develop the strengths of the followers. Nevertheless it shows that both transformational leadership style and job performance have a significant and positive relationship.
Stum (1999) stated that employee commitment reflects the quality of an organization‟s leadership. Furthermore, it is logical to assume that the leadership behaviour would have a significant relationship with the development of the organization commitment. A relationship between commitment and transformational leadership style has been reported on the organization and management literature. In three separate studies done by Popper, Mayseless and Castelnovo (2000), evidence was found to support the hypothesis that a
positive correlation exists between transformational leadership and attachment by Podsakoff, MacKenzie and Bommer (1996) who found that leadership behaviours explained 48% of the variance in organizational commitment and 55% of trust. Other than that, Chiok Foong (2001) studied the effect of leadership behaviours on employee outcomes in Singapore. A positive significant correlation was shown among organizational commitment and leadership behaviour.
Trust has been identified as an important part of numerous leadership theories. In transformational leadership style, according to Podsakoff, Mackensie, Moorman and Fetter (1990) it was stated that transformational and charismatic leaders built trust in their followers. Mayer and Davis (1999) stated that a model of trust is based on the perspective that transformational leadership behaviours such as individual consideration, intellectual stimulation and individual motivation have an influence on the development of trust. In addition, Arnold, Barling and Kelloway (2001) also showed that transformational leadership increases trust and organizational commitment. According to Dirks and Ferrin (2002), individuals observe leader‟s actions and draw inferences about the nature of their relationship with the leader and/or the character of the leader. Furthermore, Dirks and Ferrin (2000) have shown that trust in leadership has a significant relationship with individual outcomes including job performance and organizational commitment. They found that trust in supervisor was more strongly related to the job level variables whereas trust in senior leadership was more strongly related to organizational level of variables.
3.2 Conceptual Framework
In relations to the above discussion about the research topic, a conceptual framework was developed in a proper way and presented in a diagram. According to Sekaran, (2006) conceptual framework is the conceptual model of how the theories relate to the logical sense of the relationship among the several factors identified as important to the problems. The conceptual framework shows the variables used in the study based on the literature review discussed. This research recognized that independent variables and dependent variables are both related to each other and for the moderating variable, it being used as the factor that involves in the relationship between independent variable and dependent variable. There are three types of variables in the framework. The first variable identified is the transformational leadership. Under the transformational leadership there are four dimensions which are idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration which appear as independent variables. The second variable in this framework is identified as job performance under the dependent variable measured by commitment and motivation. Besides, there is also a moderating variable which is trust. This study was conducted to determine the relationship between transformational leadership and job performance and to determine the impact of transformational leadership toward the job performance among employees.
Independent Variable Dependent Variable