Life
James MacGregor Burns was born in 1918 in Melrose, Massachusetts. For many years he taught political science at Williams College. He wrote presidential biographies - for the second volume of his biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1970) he received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He died in 2014.
“Leadership” (1978)
In Leadership, drawing on an analysis of political and social leaders, Burns distinguished:
- transactional leadership - based on exchange of benefits,
- transforming leadership - in which leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.
Burns stressed that leadership is a moral process: leaders must respond to the real needs and values of followers rather than merely manipulate them. He also wrote that leadership is “one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth”.
Significance
Burns' book is regarded as one of the foundations of modern leadership studies. Bernard Bass developed his concept into the theory of transformational leadership. See also transactional leadership.
Sources
J. M. Burns, Leadership, Harper & Row 1978 J. M. Burns, Transforming Leadership, Atlantic Monthly Press 2003 The Pulitzer Prizes, History, 1971, pulitzer.org