Transformational leadership qualities of women library leaders in university libraries in Malaysia / Nik Nur Izzati Nik Rosli.

Leadership is one interesting area of study where the exploration continually happens everyday. Studies on women transformational leadership is an area of concerned nowadays. There are four dimensions of transformational leadership qualities namely, inspirational leadership, idealised influence, intellectual stimulation, individualised consideration and they are held to have a relationship on the performance of leaders in organisations. Therefore, this study is conducted to identify whether transformational leadership is being practiced by women library leaders in university libraries in Malaysia. Questionnaires were distributed to 200 professional librarians in seven public university libraries which are University Malaya (UM), Intenational Islamic University Malaysia (HUM), Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP) and Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) where the Chief Librarian is a woman and they were being assessed by the librarians in their library. However, only 79 questionnaires were returned. The findings revealed that the four transformational leadership qualities exist among women library leaders in public university libraries. The result shows that the staff perceived that women library leaders practiced transformational leadership; Respondents agreed that their leaders have the transformational leadership qualities and rated highest score in idealised influence (4.15) and lowest in individualised considerations (3.95). The findings also revealed that there are differences regarding individualised consideration between genders. Statistical significant difference was also found regarding performance of women library leaders among institutions. Furthermore, a positive relationship exists between transformational leadership qualities and performance of the women library leaders in university libraries in Malaysia. This implies that a leader who has the high level of transformational leadership qualms will likely to have high level of work performance.