Leadership

1. Introduction

The current concept of evaluation of information technology makes certain assumptions. These centre in broad terms on the ability of evaluation systems to represent initiatives in ways that allow efficacious judgements to be taken. As a consequence of this assumption, representational faithfulness is assumed to be a primary requirement. Given representational faithfulness, it is assumed, rational decisions can be taken, and evaluation can be used to foster learning within feedback cycles. This assumption is consistent with a particular kind of leadership, which has been termed “transactional”. Transactional leadership is based on the premise that leaders clarify the goals of subordinates, and provide rewards and punishments concomitant with performance against goals. Transactional leadership clearly has an important role to play within the modern enterprise but there is an alternative: “transformational” leadership (Burns, 1978). Transformational leadership begins with assumptions which differ markedly from transactional leadership, and thereby implies a different approach to evaluation. In broad terms, these assumptions centre on achieving results by stimulating subordinates; rather than through systems of contingent reward. The central question to be pursued in this paper concerns the relevance and implications of transactional and transformational leadership for the practice of information technology evaluation.

The next section considers transactional leadership and explains its relationship to evaluation. Limitations of evaluation based upon evaluation and transactional leadership are explored both through the existing literature and through an existing study of the views of a group of Financial Directors of UK FTSE top-500 companies (all quotations used within this paper are taken from McAulay et al, 1997). Transformational leadership is then presented and comments made by the Financial Directors are used to suggest ways in which evaluation can be aligned with this form of leadership. The implicit argument