Step 1: Define Transformational Leadership.
Transformational leadership is a style in which a leader works with followers to identify needed change, creates a shared vision to guide the change through inspiration, and executes the change in tandem with committed members of the group. It focuses on transforming followers into leaders themselves.
Step 2: Identify who first coined the term.
The concept was initially introduced by sociologist James V. Downton in 1973 in his work on rebel leadership, but it was not yet a developed management theory at that stage.
Step 3: Identify who gave it its foundational theoretical form.
The theory was comprehensively developed and brought into mainstream leadership scholarship by James MacGregor Burns in his landmark 1978 book simply titled "Leadership." Burns drew a clear distinction between transactional leaders (who exchange rewards for performance) and transformational leaders (who inspire followers to transcend self-interest for a higher collective purpose).
Step 4: Understand Burns' key contribution.
Burns argued that true leadership is inherently transformational because it elevates both the leader and the follower to higher levels of motivation and moral purpose, not just task completion.
Step 5: Note subsequent development.
Bernard M. Bass later extended Burns' theory in the 1980s by making it more applicable to organizational settings and developing measurement scales, but the foundational concept is credited to Burns.
Step 6: Confirm the answer.
The scholar credited with giving the concept of Transformational Leadership is James MacGregor Burns (1978).
\[ \boxed{ \text{James MacGregor Burns} } \]