A Test of Comparative Explanatory Power between Korean-Style and Transformational Leadership

The prime purpose of this study is to empirically examine the comparative explanatory power between Korean-Style leadership and transformational leadership on leadership effectiveness. According to the existing literature, transformational leadership is prevalent in 60 countries including the US and Korea but explains approximately 30% of leadership effectiveness. In the current study, 196 team leader-member dyads have been conveniently sampled and surveyed within financial and manufacturing industries. The study results showed that, as hypothesized, Korean-Style leadership has significant positive relationships with innovative behavior, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and has stronger relationship with innovative behaviors and organizational commitment than does transformational leadership. Implications for the leadership theory and practice are discussed and future research directions are also suggested.