Leadership in the 2008 financial crisis : Understanding dimensions of Transformational & Transactional leadership during financial crisis in financial institutions

Problem: -The 2008 Financial crisis has caused global impact on business market and led to question leader's competence. Prior study has found that leadership contributes certain effects to organizations' performace under a crisis situation, however there is lit-tle study which has been made regarding to identifying crisis leadership and its compe-tence and management during crisis. Purpose: - The purpose in this thesis is to bridge the gap between crisis management and leadership by finding answers of five research questions. Which are ; How this 2008 financial crisis has affected the international financial institutions, what leadership dimensions are performed by leaders during the financial crisis, which leadership style do leaders tend to rely on in international financial companies during the 2008 financial crisis, why do leaders tend to rely on the dimensions of transformational leadership or transactional leadership and what are the implications in this study that could lead to fu-ture research. Method: - The study employs qualitative methods to fulfill better and deeper understanding about 'how' and 'why' on leadership dimension during the 2008 financial crisis. Data were collected by personal interviews to support and act as a foundation of the analysis to answer the research questions. The choice of interviewees is middle managers of large international companies in the financial sector in Sweden and South Korea. Conclusions: - The finding of this study indicates that 2008 financial crisis has af-fected on large international financial corporations in Sweden and South Korea. More-over, three dimensions of transformational leadership are strongly performed by the middle managers during the 2008 financial crisis. The three strongly performed dimen-sions are (1) Inspirational Motivation, (2) Charisma/ Idealized Influence and (3) Indivi-dualized consideration