Holistic Approach to Transformational and Transactional Project Leadership Styles: Literature Review 2016–2019

The notion of project leadership is considered to be one of the most popular topics among both researchers and managers. However, the question of whether transformational project leadership (TFL) or transactional project leadership (TAL) is more efficient for organizations is widely debated. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the tendencies in the research of TFL and TAL in 2016–2019. This study was based on literature review and selected research articles of each year from Scopus according to particular metrics: article citation index, author h-index and journal CiteScore. A questionnaire among experts was conducted in order to evaluate the relationship between the metrics. The main contribution of this study is that it unites research papers of a different focus and offers insight into the key findings on the notions of TFL and TAL in the last four years. The study shows that TFL and TAL were found to have both positive and negative implications under certain factors and circumstances. Furthermore, the study indicates that TFL and TAL do not oppose but rather complement each other. Hence, the balance between TFL and TAL is likely to be an optimum choice. Limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are thoroughly discussed in the paper.