The Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Followers’ Work Characteristics and Task Performance

Although leaders and followers are both essential elements within the leadership process, there has been limited research regarding followers and their effects in the process. This study aims to examine the relationship between transformational leadership and followers’ work characteristics and performance, and follower’s attitudes towards a leader as a moderating variable. A questionnaire survey will be used to collect data from Malaysian multi-national corporations. The questionnaire will be utilized to measure followers’ work characteristics and task performance with their leader while the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire will measure follower’s perception to the leadership style of their leader. Furthermore, three followers' attitudes toward their leader (trust in the leader, loyalty, and value congruence) as moderators of this association. The literature review focuses on the followers’ outcomes and builds the framework of conceptual model. Two theoretical perspectives have guided the theoretical framework which are the transformational leadership theory and leader-member exchange theory. The proposal will give an increased understanding of the implementation of transformational leadership in Malaysian MNCs and its implication on outcomes of followers. This framework reflects a growing interest in extending transformational leadership to emerging in developing counties, thus contributing to a wider body of knowledge.