Contingent reward
Εξαρτημένη ανταμοιβή
Making clear what is expected and then delivering exactly what was agreed in return, which is the core of what the field calls transactional leadership. It is the plain half of the picture, and in the meta analysis it sits just behind the transformational half rather than far below it.
How to spot it
Count the last three things you said you would do by a date, and check how many arrived on that date.
The research behind the term
The term is not our invention. It comes from published research, and what follows is what that research found — our own synthesis of the published abstract, not a translation of the original.
Judge, T. A., & Piccolo, R. F. (2004). Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity — doi:10.1037/0021-9010.89.5.755
What it found
- Transformational leadership shows an overall validity of .44, which generalises to both longitudinal and multi-source designs.
- It is followed by contingent reward (.39) and — with a negative sign — laissez-faire leadership (-.37); management by exception relates inconsistently to the criteria.
- For several criteria, contingent reward had a stronger relationship than transformational leadership — a finding the authors describe as unexpected.
- Transformational leadership correlates very strongly with contingent reward (.80), meaning the two styles are not truly independent.
How it found it
A meta-analysis of 626 correlations from 87 sources, examining the full range of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership.
What it means for leadership
Vision is no substitute for consistency: plainly and reliably rewarding what was agreed predicts performance just as well — and sometimes better — than an inspirational style.
Sources
Every claim on this page maps to published research. The citations link to the original source.
- Judge, T. A., & Piccolo, R. F. (2004). Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity — doi:10.1037/0021-9010.89.5.755