This article furthers the integration of leadership theory with quality management theory by testing the influence of both transformational and transactional leadership on a firm's quality improvement. A survey of quality managers in the United States was conducted to measure the leadership characteristics of the firm and the firm's quality improvement. This article examines the relationship of infrastructure and core quality management practices to the levels of transformational and transactional leadership in the firm. The authors found that transformational leadership significantly affects both infrastructure and core quality management practices, while transactional leadership does not significantly affect either set of practices. However, there were significantly higher levels of both transformational and transactional leadership behavior exhibited in the successful firms compared to the unsuccessful firms. The implications of these finding for quality management theory are discussed.
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Laohavichien et al. (2009) studied this question.