Factors that Affect Followers' Perception of Leader's [sic] Transformational Leadership Performance in Taiwan

Cognitive dissonance arises as a result of heterogeneous ethnic identities, contradicting religions, conflicting national identities, confronting political stances and ideologies, incompatible beliefs, and/or value systems that followers and their leaders possess. The purpose of this research study is to explore the influence on followers' perception of their leader's transformational leadership performance, which may be affected by the heterogeneity in ethnic identities, national identities, political stances, and ideologies, or by the geographical regions, gender, and age in Taiwan.

Transformational leadership theory has been well documented in a considerable number of research studies in past decades. While most transformational leadership research has been focused on the leadership behavior from the leaders' perspective, few attempts have been made from the followers' perspectives to look into the influence on the transformational leadership performance implicated by the cognitive dissonance of followers.

This research study was conducted via survey questionnaires distributed to 1400 respondents in public or private sectors. The number of returned cases was 1141 in which 1121 were valid. The findings sustains that in Taiwan the followers' perception of their leader's transformational leadership performance can be affected by the heterogeneity in ethnic identities, national identities, political stances, or ideologies, but not by the geographical regions, gender, or age.