Transformational leadership- The fast track to excellence?
Leadership and Functional stupidity
Home exam
Submitted by:
Beatrice Åman
Course: Organising Knowledge- Intensive Work (Fall 2022)
Teacher: Michal Zawadzki
Amount of words: 2246
Moderator:
Thank you Fredric for your presentation of your best-selling book "Transformational
leadership as a fast track to excellence," which is about improving the profitability of
organizations in knowledge-intensive firms through transformational leadership. We at the
University of Uppsala feel honored that you took the time to visit us today in this seminar
about views on leadership. Now the idea is that we will open up for the students here at this
seminar to ask you questions. However, before we open up for questions from the audience, I
would first like to ask you, what inspired you to write this book?
Fredric (Management guru):
Thank you so much Moderator, for the kind words and for inviting me today. This is a good
question, and I will try to answer it in the best possible way. So let us start with the basics. A
book by Hodge et al. (2003), which I have taken much inspiration from while writing my
book, takes a strategic approach to organization theory and focuses on different ways
managers could operate organizations more efficiently and effectively. This book is
fascinating, as it considers that the general business environment is characterized by a lot of
change, which also applies to the climate that knowledge-intensive firms operate within.
Furthermore, the book emphasizes that organizations must interact with their external
environment to survive. However, as many of you probably already know, the external
environment is uncertain and unpredictable. Therefore, organizations need tools to deal with
this inevitable uncertainty, which usually are broad tools such as, for example, Total Quality
Management ( Hodge et al., 2003). However, another "softer approach," which also enables
more decentralized management, is, in my opinion, to deal with this uncertainty through good
leadership. I have previously worked as a leader in a knowledge-intensive company, and
transformational leadership helped me manage the intense daily changes that occurred.
Therefore, this knowledge of organizational theory, combined with my work experience,
inspired me to write this book which focuses on my ten steps to becoming a transformational
leader in your workplace...I hope that answers your question, Moderator.
Moderator:
Yes, it did, and thank you for your answer. If anyone in the audience has a question, please
feel free to raise your hand...Yes, Beatrice here in the front row; what is your question to
Fredric?
Beatrice:
First, I want to thank you, Fredric, for a great presentation. Furthermore, as we students in this
course had the opportunity to read your book, I found many perspectives on the phenomenon
of transformational leadership interesting. Therefore, I have some questions that I would like
to ask. First, why did you choose to specify yourself on transformational leadership?
Fredric (Management guru):
First, it is great that you have read my book.
I could start by briefly explaining the concept of leadership. Simply put, we can say that
leadership is critical when it comes to creating a good performance in organizations. Now,
this is not only my opinion but is also supported by a study made by Bogoviz and Aleksei et
al. (2018), which studied different trends and development of the knowledge economy and
knowledge-intensive firms. Moreover, other researchers, such as Moradi Korejan and
Shahbazi et al. (2016, p. 460 ), who studied the theory behind transformational leadership,
even state that leadership is "one of the most important factors of success.". Therefore, I see it
as the fast track to excellence, which also is the title of my book.
Now, leadership can be performed differently, depending on leadership style. The
transformational leadership style I work with focuses on building more positive change,
respect, and trust to foster creativity (Bogoviz and Aleksei et al., 2018). Furthermore, Bogoviz
and Aleksei et al. (2018) claim that the knowledge economy's distinctive features, such as the
fast-phase changing environment, require a specific type of leadership, which in this case is
transformational leadership. According to them, this was seen as the most appropriate
leadership style for these companies due to its focus on innovation and competitive
advantage. And lastly, my own experiences with this leadership style made me want to
specify on transformational leadership.
Beatrice:
Thank you, Fredric. Positive change, respect, and trust sound indeed very lovely.
Unfortunately, my experience of leadership is that it is usually charming on paper but does
not necessarily match reality. Can you give me any example of research showing this
leadership style's actual outcomes?
Fredric (Management guru):
Actually, I do.
As I mentioned earlier, when asked what inspired me to write this book, I talked about the
uncertainty in the external environment of organizations. If we go back to the study made by
Bogoviz and Aleksei et al. (2018), which specifically studied the role of transformational
leadership in knowledge-intensive firms, they discovered through their literature review that
transformational leadership could alleviate this uncertainty. This was done by encouraging the
search for new opportunities and encouraging employees to rely more on their implicit
knowledge in the workplace. Furthermore, as explained earlier, knowledge-intensive firms are
usually in a dynamic and fast-changing environment (Bogoviz and Aleksei et al., 2018;
Moradi Korejan and Shahbazi et al., 2016), which puts more pressure on these firms to
quickly adapt to new changes. According to Bogoviz and Aleksei et al. (2018),
transformational leadership can save precious time in this adaptation process by providing
information and efficiently assigning tasks. Furthermore, transformational leaders inspire
employees to be creative by leading in a way that encourages them to invent and innovate in
their workspace. Simply put, it can be said that leaders of this type make employees realize
the value of what they do (Moradi Korejan and Shahbazi et al., 2016 ).
Beatrice:
Thank you, Fredric, and that is indeed an interesting perspective. As I mentioned before, we
students in this course had read your book, but also another book called The Power and
Pitfalls of functional stupidity at work (2016) by Alvesson and Spicers. It is interesting having
read both these books, as it has given us students the opportunity to look at this phenomenon
of leadership from two different perspectives.
So if it is okay with you, I would like to ask you some questions regarding these different
views on leadership related to the theme of functional stupidity at work.
Fredric (Management guru):
Of course, you can. I like these interactions with you students. I have heard of the book
before, but to clarify your questions, you are more than welcome to tell me more about this
book and its concept of functional stupidity.
Beatrice:
Sure, I will do my best to describe it. In this book by Alvesson and Spicer (2006), they use
functional stupidity as a central theme throughout the book and apply it to various aspects of
work within organizations. One of these aspects they focus on is leadership and how
leadership itself can lead to functional stupidity. To clarify, the term "functional stupidity" it
does not focus on pure stupidity in a Homer Simpson type of way, if you know what I mean.
Instead, the term focuses more on the type of stupidity caused by an inability or unwillingness
to use cognitive and reflective skills in the workplace. For example, this type of stupidity
could play out as not asking questions, failing to see the meaning behind the organization's
activities, or simply denying the complexity and ambiguity of the world when implementing
new strategies.
Fredric (Management guru):
That sounds like an exciting book. Thank you for filling me in on the details concerning this
term of functional stupidity. Now, what is the question you would like to ask me?
Beatrice
Right. When I listened to your answer about what inspired you to write your book, it seemed
like you considered some factors that reduce this type of stupidity. For example, you talked
about how you used leadership to reduce uncertainty and unpredictability in your former
company's environment. You also emphasized that the transformational leadership style
enabled your employees to see the value in their work. Unfortunately, from my own
experience, this vision of all the great things leaders do or should do seems very practical in
an idealized setting. Nevertheless, when these principles are translated into reality, there are
usually some contradictions.
For this reason, after reading your book, I did some research of my own on transformational
leadership. I found a study done by Chen et al. (2018), which examines and measures the
actual impact of transformational leadership on employees' task performance. Interestingly,
these researchers found that transformational leadership's effect on employees' task
performance had little to do with the actual leader. According to them, for transformational
leadership to positively affect employees' task performance, the employees should have a
proactive personality, meaning people who take action and control of their own environment
(Chen et al., 2018).
In my opinion, all this leadership focus in your book diminishes the importance for the actual
"followers.", which for me is contradicting. Because in order to have leaders, you need
followers. According to Alvesson and Spicer (2016), this is also a problem regarding
leadership in knowledge-intensive companies because people with good degrees or already
high positions usually do not see themselves as followers. What is your opinion on this?
Fredric (Management guru):
That is an interesting point. My response to you is that I agree that leaders need a follower
base. However, you need to consider that inexperienced or young employees are usually quite
happy to follow. However, when it comes to employees in high positions, you have a good
point. Nevertheless, speaking from personal experience, being a follower, despite an elevated
position, can be comfortable when it comes to more stressful situations. That said, there will
always be followers, which is why I choose to focus my book mainly on leadership.
Beatrice:
I agree that sometimes we need leadership, for example, if we are young or inexperienced in
our workplace. However, most of the time, this is not the case, especially in knowledge-
intensive companies. I stand by Alvesson and Spicer's (2016) view that it is hard to find
reasonably experienced people willing to follow. Furthermore, this could be why leadership,
in reality, often gets marginalized.
But if people believe in leadership, they tend to stop thinking and let the leader do the
thinking for them. According to Alvesson and Spicer (2016), this is a practical example of
something that reduces employees' ability to take their own initiative.
It is nice that you offer your advice on leadership, but the title of your book suggests a recipe
for success, and to reach this success, one must follow your ten steps. For example, one of
your steps was to be authentic and to build trust with employees by engaging in nonorganizational activities, such as celebrating someone's birthday or participating during coffee
breaks. Now, this is something that Alvesson and Spicer (2016) bring up in their book. Due to
leadership's positive reputation, leaders are usually very fast with labeling trivial activities
with a subordinate person as leadership activities. It sounds a bit like your book is promoting
small talk with your employees because it would have, in some way, a significant impact on
their ability to innovate and be creative. Wouldn't that make all the employees leaders then?
Fredrik management guru:
From my experience, it can be good to conserve our cognitive resources when working in
dynamic environments, such as knowledge-intensive firms. My ten steps, which you choose
to call a "recipe for success," is an excellent way to put the staff in the same direction.
According to the Hodge et al. (2003) book, which I mentioned earlier, organizations require a
purpose and common goals. However, to achieve these common goals, you need to get people
moving in the same direction. Furthermore, since so much change is happening in knowledgeintensive firms, a script on how to get people to move in the direction you want them to can
save a lot of time and effort.
Beatrice:
I understand that this non-thinking could, sometimes, have beneficial outcomes as it gets
things done efficiently. However, according to Arvidsson and Spicer (2016), these benefits
usually only occur in the short term and could come with significant consequences in the long
term. According to them, this mindlessness or cognitive autopilot can risk important
information or events going unnoticed, creating problems further down the road. Moreover,
just placing endless faith in another person, in this case, the leader, cannot always be that
good?
Saving time and effort sounds a little bit in my ears like an unwillingness to use cognitive and
reflective skills in the workplace, which is functional stupidity. Furthermore, this absence of
reflexivity concerning the actual followers is a bit concerning. Going back to Chen et al’s.,
(2018) research, which shows that the followers are the ones who determine the outcomes of
this transformational leadership style, wouldn’t then be more reasonable to write a book on
how to promote more proactive employees?
My point is that I am not convinced that there are any specific golden steps for perfect
leadership as its outcomes, like everything else, depends on individual perspectives and
different contexts. But engaging in activities that remove narrow thinking at work would
increase the possibility of more proactive employees. This is not only an action to prevent
functional stupidity but also a way to increase the use of this type of leadership style that
you're promoting. So, don't you think you may be starting in the wrong direction? Is
leadership really the fast track to excellence, or is it proactive employees?
Moderator:
Now I must interrupt your discussion here, sorry. Fredric has only a few minutes before
moving on to the following lecture. Furthermore, for the students, please sign your attendance
on the list at the exit before you leave so that your teacher can see that you attended this
seminar. Thank you for today!
Reference list
Alvesson, M. and Spicer, A. (2016). The Stupidity Paradox The Power and Pitfalls of
Functional Stupidity at Work. 1st edn. Great Britain: PROFILE BOOKS LTD.
Bogoviz, A., Lobova, S., Popkova, E. (2018). Transformational leadership as a factor in the
success of knowledge-intensive companies. MATEC Web of Conferences [online]. Available
at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328283690_Transformational_leadership_as_a_f
actor_in_the_success_of_knowledge-intensive_companies (Accessed: 25 October 2022)
Chen, Y., Ning, R., Yang, T., Feng, S., and Yang, C. (2018). Is Transformational Leadership
Always Good for Employee Task Performance? Examining Curvilinear and Moderated
Relationships. Frontiers of Business Research in China [online]. Available at:
https://fbr.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s11782-018-00448#:~:text=Transformational%20leadership%20has%20a%20greater,low%20level%20of%20p
roactive%20personality. (Accessed: 27 October 2022)
Hodges, B.J., Anthony, W., Gales, L.M. (2003) Organization Theory – a strategic approach.
6th edn. Pearson Education. pp. 06-23.
Moradi Korejan, M. and Shahbazi, H. (2016) An analysis of the transformational leadership
theory. Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, p. 452-460 [online]. Available at:
<www.researchgate.net/publication/323732677_An_analysis_of_the_transformational_leader
ship_theory, 10.4314/jfas.v8i3s.192 (Accessed: 20 October 2022).