The effectiveness of adopting transformational leadership in Tencent China:

its impact on employee performance

1 Statement of main research topic
Research context
To stay competitive in a fast-paced and complex world, companies must inspire
employees to innovate products and services. Proactive employees would make
great attempts at bringing exclusive and memorable experiences to consumers
(Titisari et al., 2020). Furthermore, Astity and Udin (2020) added that
transformational leadership is able to create a conducive climate for stirring changes
in employee performance, inspiring the followers to go beyond personal interests
and facilitate long-term growth of the organisation. Transformational leadership is a
multi-dimensional concept comprising of idealised influence, individualised
consideration, and intellectual stimulation (Kebede and Goyal, 2019). However, there
are some controversies about whether this leadership style is adopted effectively in
real practices, as it may be a disguise of some leaders to protect their personal
reputation. To achieve empirical understanding, this research would conduct case
study of Tencent China, a leading IT company. With above 0.11 million employees
presents severe challenges for leaders (Tencent China, 2022), so the effectiveness
of adopting transformational leadership becomes more vital and deserves critical
evaluation.
Importance of this study
Although prior studies have recognised the effect of transformational leadership on
employee performance, their findings are mostly about the situations outside China
boundary. For example, Kebede and Goyal (2019) focused upon Ethiopia, and
Titisari et al. (2020) carried out investigation in Indonesia. This research can bring
new academic perspectives by seeking empirical data about Tencent China. Besides
academic value, this research also helps Tencent China evaluate their HRM
practices. Leaders in the company would gain more insights into employee
perceptions, and consider some changes in their methods of inspiring and
influencing people.
Research aim and research questions

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This research intends to evaluate how transformational leadership is executed,
besides its impact on employee performance. Four research questions will be
answered:
What is the extent that Tencent leaders exert idealised influence on employees?
What is the extent that Tencent leaders give individualized consideration to
employees?
What is the extent that Tencent leaders provide intellectual stimulation to
employees?
How do above attributes of transformational leadership influence employee
performance?
2 Summary literature review
Transformational leadership
Transformational leadership is executed when a leader uses vision and passion to
inspire people on the team, makes continuous efforts to balance his attention
between the progress and mental state of subordinates, and thus transforms the
organisation in a positive manner (Lee and Hidayat, 2018). More specifically, Astity
and Udin (2020) argued that this leadership style has three characteristics or
attributes: idealised influence, individualised consideration, and intellectual
stimulation. Specifically, idealised influence means that a leader influences people
on the team through regulating his own attitudes and behaviours. Regarding
individualised consideration, attention is put on the subordinates’ personal needs and
their expectations for career advancement. Intellectual stimulation involves
encouraging people to engage in the brainstorming.
Though above researches have provided certain understanding about
transformational leadership, they make little attempt to discover how this leadership
style is implemented in a particular context. This research can fill the gap by
exploring the current situations of Tencent China.
Influence of transformational leadership attributes on employee performance
Based on idealised influence, a leader inspires the followers to work more effectively
and ethically, because some people show trust towards the leader who acts as role

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model (Asbari et al., 2021). As for individualised consideration, Adnan and Valliappa
(2019) believed that transformational leadership encourages employee devotion to
company development through stirring a sense of belonging. Concerning intellectual
stimulation, it exerts positive impact on employee performance by empowering the
subordinates to participate in strategic decision making (Kebede and Goyal, 2019).
Employees are pushed to think about any relevant ways that lead to innovation in
solving problems and improve self-efficacy to accomplish a challenging goal.
However, Sandvik et al. (2019) reminded that transformational leadership is not
always conducive for enhancing employee performance, because for example,
personality of employees might mediate their relationships. Some workers would not
show admiration towards any leaders, and dislike assuming extra workload of
contributing strategic advice. They simply focus on fixed task content and get the
rewards. From this angle, autocratic or transactional leadership might have greater
potential to enhance their morale.
Above studies have clarified the ways that transformational leadership attributes
influence employee performance, but empirical evidence is lacked. This research is
valuable for verifying previous theories based on real-time data from Tencent China.
3 Methodology
Regarding data collection, in-depth interview would be conducted. In-depth interview
gives the chance to explore an unknown situation by letting participants express their
own perceptions and experiences (Saunders et al., 2019). Besides, this method can
achieve adequate and useful information by accessing small sample size, as
highlighted by Bell et al. (2019). The adoption of transformational leadership is
complicated and specific to Tencent China, unknown to the researcher. Hence it is
reasonable to adopt interview method and let Tencent employees interpret their
experience with leaders. By contrast, questionnaire survey is not appropriate
because of three considerations: it restricts the freedom for participants to express
ideas about the extent of transformational leadership they have experienced;
questionnaire design requires sufficient knowledge of the researcher about research
issue, but the researcher is not familiar with leadership in Tencent China; a huge
sample size needs to be covered, but it is not realistic to access about one hundred
of employees who are busy with daily work.

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During the process of data collection, the researcher will contact with Tencent China,
explain research purpose, and gain access to five recommended employees with
different job roles. For example, they may work in different departments such as
marketing, IT, customer service, game development, besides different gender and
age characteristics. Participants can decide the time point of accepting Wechat
interview. Each interview is estimated to spend approximately 25 minutes, because
at least two interview questions would be presented about each topic.
As for data analysis, interview data will be put into thematic analysis. Primarily,
interviewee profile will be set up, where participants are referred to as Interviewee A,
Interviewee B, etc. Furthermore, the main ideas of interviewees are sorted out and
converted into several themes and sub-themes. To avoid personal bias, the
viewpoints of all interviewees will be incorporated into the discussion about each
research question. Important findings will also intertwine with previous theories.

Timetable

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Bibliography
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Transformational Leadership on Affective Commitment and Employee Performance’,
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Adnan, S. N. S. M. and Valliappan, R. (2019) ‘Communicating shared vision and
leadership styles towards enhancing performance’, International Journal of
Productivity and Performance Management, 68 (6), pp. 1042-1056.
Asbari, M., Hidayat, D. and Purwanto, A. (2021) ‘Managing Employee Performance:
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Bell, E., Bryman, A. and Harley, B. (2019) Business research methods (Fifth edition).
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Kebede, G. H. and Goyal, S. (2019) ‘The relationship between transformational
leadership and job performance in Amhara national regional state bureaus, Ethiopia’,
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Lee, C. W. and Hidayat, N. (2018) ‘The influence of transformational leadership and
intrinsic motivation to employee performance’, Advances in Management and
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Sandvik, A. M., Selart, M., Schei, V. and Martinsen, Ø. L. (2019) ‘Setting the Scene:
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Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2019) Research methods for business
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Titisari, P., Afandi, M. F., Lukiyanto, K. (2020) ‘Organisational Citizenship Behavior:
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Tencent China (2022) About Tencent. Available at: https://www.tencent.com/en-