BEYOND BARRIERS: HOW TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP TRAITS SHAPE WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP OUTCOMES IN MALAYSIA’S PUBLIC SECTOR

Abstract

The role of women leadership in the public sector is also becoming a burning topic in Malaysia as the government puts more effort into the inclusive governance and sustainable institutional performance. Notwithstanding these efforts women are still underrepresented in top leadership positions, in most cases as a result of structural, cultural and organizational factors. The study design is empirical research that looks into the effect of transformational leadership characteristics on leadership performance of women leaders in the Malaysian public sector. The research coordinated by the transformational leadership theory discusses the four major dimensions, including idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration and their impacts of the leadership performance, which are job performance, organizational commitment, and perceived career advancement. The quantitative research design was embraced and data was gathered using a structured questionnaire which was given to 240 women who had supervisory and managerial roles in the federal ministries, state departments and statutory bodies. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis were applied to analyze 221 usable responses. The results show that the transformational leadership qualities positively and significantly influence the leadership outcomes. Inspirational motivation and individualized consideration became the most formidable predictors and idealized influence and intellectual stimulation also provided significant contributions. These findings indicate that transformational leadership is important in helping women leaders to break institutionalized challenges in order to deliver positive leadership results in the public sector. The research will make an empirical contribution to the literature on leadership and gender and will offer practical implications in terms of leadership development programs and gender-based policies in the Malaysian public sector.