Abstract:
Besides the enormous attention paid to transformational leadership construct for the last
four decades, much of the literature does not adequately delve deeper into the respective
dimensions of the construct, thus limiting the clarity of how the dimensions impact
organizations. This paper reviews the extant conceptual, theoretical, and empirical literature
on the idealized influence and inspirational motivation dimensions of transformational
leadership style focusing on microfinance context. This paper presents a comprehensive
and integrative theoretical framework for knowledge advancement in the field of leadership.
The methodology used for the review integrates the desktop and critical analysis of 56
journal articles in these dimensions. The key databases used to extract the relevant literature
were JSTOR, Emerald, Google Scholar, DOAJ, and Wiley Interscience, with 69.09% being
articles published in 2017 – 2021. Aspects used to qualify articles for review consideration
were transformational leadership, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, and
leadership in microfinance or any combination. The emerging gaps in the theorization and
conceptualization of idealized influence and inspirational motivation were identified,
presenting a case for further research on the transformational leadership construct. The
review establishes that the four “Is” of transformational leadership (Idealized influence,
Inspirational motivation, Intellectual stimulation, and Individualized consideration) are
ambiguously interrelated, presenting a challenge of incoherence in the conceptual models
used by researchers to conduct empirical research. The study also seeks to fill the contextual
gap on the scanty research done to date on the outcomes of idealized influence and
inspirational motivation in microfinance context such as staff retention, organizational
commitment, self-efficacy, and organizational performance. A comprehensive conceptual
framework for guiding further research on the constructs is formulated, including
supportive propositions that can be empirically tested.