Identifying the Dimensions and Components of Transformational Leadership Style in Educational Managers of Islamic Azad University

Transformational leaders create a dynamic and active vision for their organizations. As a result, the aim of this research was identifying the dimensions and components of transformational leadership style in the educational managers of Islamic Azad University.

In this qualitative study from the academic experts in the field of management and experts in the field of quality of educational services, number of 15 people based on the principle of theoretical saturation and with the purposeful sampling method were selected as a sample. To collect data were used from semi-structured interview, which its content validity according to experts' opinion was obtained 0.83 and their reliability with the agreement coefficient method between two coders was obtained 0.89. For data analysis were used from theme analysis method in NVivo version 10 software.

The findings showed that the transformational leadership style in the educational managers of Islamic Azad University had 8 dimensions, 23 components and 143 indicators.The relationship network dimension has two components of horizontal interactions in the university and vertical interactions in the university, the leader characteristics dimension has three components of personality traits, leader competence and professional ethics of change leaders, the resource preparation dimension has five components of presence of suitable hardware facilities, presence of suitable software facilities, existence of the integration system of statistics and information, benefiting from IT specialist human resources and empowerment and training, the status review dimension has two components of planning and change status review and existing and desirable situation review, the change drivers dimension has two components of creating motivation for transformation and support and encourage to learning, the management in the time of change has two components of conflict management and collaborative management, the dimension of team formation and stakeholder support has three components of gaining political support, forming a team of experts and building trust and the dimension of change measures has four components of change structure, justice in the time of change, performance review and strategy of change.

According to the findings of this study, to improve leadership in the Islamic Azad University it is possible to provide the basis for improving and promoting the identified dimensions and components of transformational leadership style.