TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS (TLBs) AND MANAGEMENT OF FEDERAL UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTH EASTERN NIGERIA (2000-2016)

ABSTRACT

Transformational leadership describes the ideal relationship between leaders and followers. It facilitates a redefinition of a people?s mission and vision, a renewal of their commitment and the restructuring of their systems for goal accomplishment. The ultimate goal of education management is to enhance the institutional mission by ensuring high quality teaching, training, research and services to the immediate and global communities. The achievement of these objectives requires good governance that combines social vision with the understanding of global issues coupled with efficient managerial skills to enhance academic leadership, thus academic productivity. The general goal of the study was to assess how the Federal Universities in South Eastern Nigeria had achieved effective management which is a necessity for their attainment of the world class University Status through the adoption of Transformational Leadership Behaviours. The specific objectives of this study are to: (i) examine the relationship between transformational leadership behaviours and effective management of Federal Universities in the South Eastern Nigeria; (ii) determine the extent to which Nigeria University managers apply transformational leadership roles in their management of the Federal Universities in South East and (iii) identify the challenges of transformational leadership behaviours in the management of the South Eastern Federal Universities. Primary and secondary sources of data collection were used in this study. Primary sources comprised personal observation and face to face interview. The secondary sources included books, newspapers, journals and official documents. The population of the study was 21,000 staff members comprising principal officers, lecturers, senior and junior administrative and Technical staff on the one hand,

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

In this era of globalization, technology has been of great relevance, reducing the whole world to a global village. Following this, successful leaders world over tend to draw ideas from one another giving rise to the modern leadership concept known as `transformational leadership behaviours which in turn has a lot of impact world over on education generally (Onwurah, Chiaha and Ogbuanya,2007). World class status has always been the aspiration of any university that intends to continue to be in the education industry (Rozainun, Noormala, Puzziawati, Rohana, 2009). The world declaration on High Education for the 21st Century (1998) affirmed that the ultimate goal of education management is to enhance the institutional mission by ensuring high quality teaching , training, research and services to the community?. The achievement of these objectives requires governance that combines social vision with the understanding of global issues coupled with efficient managerial skill. .Bryman, (1992) and Lowe K.B, and Sivasubramaniam, (1996) opined that in more than 100 empirical studies, transformational leadership has been found to be consistently related to organizational effectiveness. Fullan (2001) claimed that the search for effective leadership led to the discovery of transformational leadership behaviours (TLBs).
According to Leithwood (2000), Transformational leadership is that which facilitates a redefinition of a people?s mission and vision, a renewal of their commitment and the restructuring of their systems for goal accomplishment. Transformational leadership fosters capacity development and brings higher levels of personal commitment amongst ?followers? to organizational objectives. According to Bass (1990, 21) transformational leadership ?occurs when leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their employees, when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group, and when they stir employees to look beyond their own self-interest for the good of the group.? Together,
heightened capacity and commitment are held to lead to additional effort and greater
productivity (Barbuto, 2005; Leithwood & Jantzi, 2000; Spreitzer, Perttula & Xin, 2005).
According to Bass (1997) the four components of Transformational leadership behaviours are
as follows:
Idealized influence is having transformational leaders who behave in ways that result in their role models for their followers (Breaux 2010:1). Genuine trust must be built between leaders and followers.