Moral Competence as an Antecedent to Transformational Leadership

In this chapter, Georg Lind’s moral competence is presented as a necessary capacity that precedes the transformational leadership style. To this end, the analysis explores the definition of transformational leadership, its origin, characteristics, and the four components that bring together the qualities of this leadership and the ways in which transformational leaders act in their relationship with followers. Transactional leadership, with its three components, is also presented as a category that is antagonistic to transformational leadership, but in a way also complementary, as proposed in the Full Range Leadership model of Bernard Bass (1925–2007), a combined spectrum of the components of transformational and transactional leadership and the laissez-faire style. Although the bibliographic material on transformational leadership is largely focused on the organizational context, with the perspective on the phenomenon focused on the dyad leadership and results, this chapter highlights the fundamental assumption of the concept formulated by the political scientist James MacGregor Burns (1914–2014): transformational leadership occurs in a process of dual influence with a particular effect on moral development. It is in this sense that moral competence approaches transformational leadership, a relationship that is even more evident when the influence description of Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is observed. With this close relationship and with the availability of the Moral Competence Test and Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire as measuring instruments, the field of studies and experimental research is propitious to investigate the influence of the degree of moral competence in the context of transformational leadership, especially as an antecedent and necessary competence in transformational leaders.