Transformational leadership among grassroots social service organizations

Abstract

Community development organizations, including grassroots social service organizations, are being looked to increasingly address community needs in the face of shrinking government programs. The objective of this study was to assess the extent to which leaders of some of these grassroots social service organizations use transactional and transformational leadership styles, and whether these styles were related to leadership outcomes. Grassroots organizations were defined as those providing services to meet basic human needs in the immediate community and with annual budgets under $200,000. Twenty-three leaders were rated using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Form 5X . It was hypothesized that the leaders would be transformational in nature and transformational leadership would be related to positive outcomes. Findings confirmed the hypothesis and implications are presented.