LEADERSHIP STYLES AIDING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL ENTREPRENEURS- A REVIEW

In today's increasingly competitive and volatile markets, there is no such thing as a “silver bullet” to leading an organization. Internal and external environments such as employee demands, and the COVID-19 pandemic or geopolitical tensions show the importance of agile leadership. This paper discusses the transformational and contingent leadership theory. The transformational theory focusses on team building, motivation, and collaboration with employees across the organization to accomplish change (Givens, 2008). While transformational leadership focusses on the manager's actions and the consequences of his/her behavior, the contingency theory claims there is no best way to lead a company, or to make decisions but that the effectiveness of a leader is contingent – on internal and external environments. The main body of this paper then investigates the case studies of Apple and Microsoft where transformational leaders have been effective in driving change and maximizing corporate performance. Subsequently, the effectiveness of Steve Job' leadership of Apple in a different contingency is assessed. This serves to determine whether leadership in corporations today is contingent or whether transformational leadership is key to success. Finally, a critical evaluation and personal assessment of the effectiveness of these theories will be conducted. This paper concludes that these two theories are not mutually exclusive. Both are both effective approaches to leadership depending on the contingency. Contingency theory can include transformational leadership and transformational leadership can contain aspects of contingency theory. A leader can drive change based on vision and inspiration but within that Situational leaders rely on intuition and analysis of a given situation to lead in a way that makes sense based on that particular situation, if that is what the firm needs