Transactional Leadership: Ingvar Kamprad

Transactional leadership involves the leaders who will motivate and direct their subordinates primarily through appealing to their own self-interest. Leaders who have a system of rewards and punishment enable their subordinates’ motivation to strike the goals. The formal authority and responsibility in the organization embodies the power of the transactional leaders. The main goal of the subordinate is to comply with the instructions of the leader such that when a subordinate does what is desired, a reward will follow conversely if violate the wishes of the leader, a punishment will follow. Thus, the exchange between leader and subordinate takes place to achieve routine performance goals. Ingvar Kamprad uses this concept to embrace of

First, intellectual stimulation is that when a leader pushes his employees to become more creative and find new approaches of performance during work. As an inspirational motivator, the leader’s behaviour provides significance to the followers. In an individualized consideration, the leader needs to concern of his employees’ needs. And last, the leader’s charisma and the respect of his employees affect by idealized influence. His charisma affects him to move towards his employees and persuades them to build up IKEA’s culture. Kamprad is a leader who has an effluent influence on his work force. In fact, years after formally resigning as CEO of IKEA, one can find that the organization still follows the same work ethic as it did under his direct leadership. Kamprad has shown that he is an outstanding motivator. He has a clear understanding of goals in operations and successfully conveys that understanding to his work force. Kamprad believes that leading by example is the most effective method to motivating followers rather than having employees blindly follow commands and procedures. Kamprad has essentially made IKA a learning organization. He accomplishes all these by using his life experiences “moments that matter” to motivate his employees which benefit the employees because of IKEA’s

It can also be the individuals who are both verbally eloquent and able to communicate with their followers on a deep, emotional level in addition to articulate a compelling or captivating vision and arouse strong emotions in followers.

Through the article, Ingvar Kamprad is an individual who had a frugal living. He is also a thrifty entrepreneur. This is because from the article we can know that he was frugal enough in his life such as to avoid wearing suits, flies economy class, take the subway to work, drive a ten-year-old Volvo, and frequent cheap restaurants. Thus, until he became an entrepreneur, his thriftiness is infused into IKEA’s culture. His frugality had influence the others to be more frugally in life and ultimately he manages to note down his management philosophy such as “Wasting resources is a mortal sin’ as a philosophical gem. In short, the frugality of Ingvar Kamprad had embodied the charismatic leadership which is emphasis on how the leaders communicate with their followers and their ability to gain followers’ trust and persuade or influence