THE EFFECTS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL AND TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP-STYLES ON THE INFLUENCING BEHAVIOR OF SUBORDINATE POLICE OFFICERS

The purpose of the study was to investigate the influencing behaviour of subordinates as a function of supervisor leadership style within a law enforcement setting. Fifty‐three subordinate police officers returned one of four randomly distributed scenarios depicting either a male—female transformational or male—female transactional leader (supervising officer). The subordinate police officers then completed the Profile of Organizational Influence Strategies—Form M (Kipnis & Schmidt, 1982) indicating the extent to which they would use rational, soft and hard approaches to influence their supervising officer as illustrated in the scenario. It was hypothesized that transactional leadership would be more closely associated with the three police officer influencing approaches than transformational leadership. Contrary to the prediction, transformational leadership was determined to be more closely related with subordinate rational influencing behaviour than transactional leadership. The findings are discussed in terms of the nature of transformational leadership and the unique characteristics of the police officer culture. 1991 The British Psychological Society