<p>The business climate of today demands high flexibility and quick responsiveness from suppliers.</p><p>It has become essential for organizations to have effective leaders in all hierarchal</p><p>levels, which understand and are able to work under these conditions. As the market requirements</p><p>have changed, a new paradigm of leadership has evolved (Bryman, 1992). This</p><p>paradigm puts more focus on charisma and how to motivate followers, which is the essential</p><p>part of transformational leadership. According to Burns (1978), transformational leadership</p><p>is a process between leader and follower rather than exchanges. This leads to the</p><p>question of what effective leadership is and if it can be measured in some way. One</p><p>method is the use of the Multifactor leadership questionnaire, the MLQ-test, developed by</p><p>Bass 1985 from the full range model.</p><p>The conducted research for this thesis is done at PaperPak Sweden AB, a manufacturer of</p><p>disposable incontinence products located in Aneby, Småland.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate if any differences and/or similarities in leadership</p><p>can be found between or within the hierarchical levels. The intent with the report is also to</p><p>investigate those variances and if they are positive or negative for an organization.</p><p>A theoretical framework focusing on leadership has been collected, to enable the fulfillment</p><p>of the thesis purpose. This framework will act as support for the analysis of the quantitative</p><p>investigation, based on the MLQ-test. From this analysis, the authors have made</p><p>conclusions and recommendations. The degree of transformational, transactional and laissez-</p><p>faire leadership has been measured for the three leadership levels top, middle and low</p><p>management. It could be argued that the top management should show the highest degree</p><p>of transformational leadership, and low management the least, due to their positions and</p><p>work tasks. The result of the analysis supported that theory to a large extent. However,</p><p>lower management showed a significantly higher degree of transformational leadership</p><p>than middle management. One explanation could be that middle management lives in a</p><p>more stressful situation, working between top and low management, compared to the other</p><p>two, which is supported by Grout (1994).</p><p>Since the theoretical findings mean that leadership can be learnt and developed, the authors</p><p>suggest that organizations always have to follow up and try to develop their leaders and</p><p>managers towards higher degrees of transformational leadership. Finally the authors suggest</p><p>that further studies of the MLQ-test should investigate the possibilities to include measurements</p><p>of the technical side of leadership, since the test currently does not take those</p><p>factors into consideration.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:hj-948 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Timén, Peter, Hess, Elin, Gustafsson, Marcus |
| Publisher | Jönköping University, JIBS, Business Administration, Jönköping University, JIBS, Business Administration, Jönköping University, JIBS, Business Administration |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, text |
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