Qualitative Case Study Methodology, Annotated Bibliography Example

Gumusluoglu, L., & Ilsev, A. (2009). Transformational Leadership, Creativity, and Organizational Innovation. Journal of business research, 62(4), 461-473.

Gumusluoglu and Ilsev (2009) conducted a study in which proposed the impact of transformational leadership on employee’s innovation at the organizational level and creativity at the individual level. Their model that they created used a population of 163 R&D managers and personnel at 43 small and micro-sized Turkish software development companies. In conducting their research, they wanted to examine how innovation through creativity is an essential aspect in the competitive advantage and success of an organization. (Gumusluoglu and Ilsev, 2009) Within their research they utilized literature that provide numerous definitions of innovation and creativity that places innovation at the organizational level, while sees creativity at the individual level. According to the authors, “transformational leaders raise the performance expectation of their followers and “seek to transform followers’ personal values and self-concepts, and move them to a higher level of needs and aspirations” (Gumusluoglu and Ilsev, 2009, pg. 461).

Their results showed that transformational leaders do provide an impact to the creativity at both the organizational and individual levels. Using a hierarchical linear model showed that there was a positive relationship between employees’ creativity and transformational leadership. In addition, the results of their study showed that organizational motivation is positively impacted by transformational leadership, which can be measured by the market-oriented criterion that is developed for newly developing industries in developing countries. Their study considerably contributes to the purpose of this study, as it provides a case study in which provides verifiable quantitative data that can be used to draw valid conclusions to the research questions presented.

Ling, Y., Simsek, Z., Lubatkin, M. H., & Veiga, J. F. (2008). The Impact of Transformational CEOs on the Performance of Small-to Medium-Sized Firms: Does Organizational Context Matter? Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(4), 923.

Ling, Simsek, Lubatkin, and Viega provide research that provides more support to transformational leadership impact in small businesses. They outline that the presented theory in which has been the foundation of many earlier studies, suggests that CEOs that engage in the transformational leadership approach have positive impact on the performance of an organization, usually in larger organizations. The authors provide evidence from previous studies that states, “For example, Pawar and Eastman (1997) suggested that the generally positive influences of transformational leadership, which have been observed at lower levels of the managerial hierarchy, will also be observed at upper levels” (Ling et al, 2008, pg. 923).  According to Ling et al, given most of this evidence is used in larger organizations, that have failed to provide verifiable linkage to SMEs, the authors explore the impact of transformational leadership methods adopted by CEOs of smaller or privately held firms.  The authors hypothesized three contingencies in explaining CEOs direct role-played in improving the performance an organization, which assesses CEO tenure, CEO founder states, and firm size. Utilizing a quantitative research design in implementing a multisource survey from CEOs and top management teams from 121 firms, they measure the performance based on the three contingencies in which explore the relationship of CEO transformational leadership in less complex organizational contexts, SMEs.

This information is essential to this study, as they also present verifiable quantitative data from direct sources such as CEOs and members of high-level management in organizational that have less than 500 employees. They explore the linear relationship between the two variables, in which they seek to seek the contribution that each variable plays in enhancing the performance and success of the organization. Their results showed that there are positive impacts to the CEOs role in having a greater impact on the performance of SMEs than CEOs that did not found the organization. They also found in their results that the tenure of the CEO also played a role in enhancing the impact of performance from adopting transformational leadership behaviors, since they were more experience in the industry. In addition, the results revealed that the role of transformational leaders were more influential in smaller SMEs because they do not diminish the significance of the construct of leadership, that represents the backbone of the national economies. Why they limited by comparing against larger firms, for SMEs they studies, they found positive correlations between the CEOs transformational leadership and the performance of the organization.