Leadership Style and Its Impact On Employee Performance
Leadership Style and Its Impact On Employee Performance
Leadership Style and Its Impact On Employee Performance
Research Paper
Abdul Basit
Lecturer
School of Accounting & Business Management
FTMS College, Malaysia
Abdulbasit@ftms.edu.my
Zubair Hassan
Senior Lecturer
School of Accounting & Business Management
FTMS College, Malaysia
Zubai7@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to determine the impact of leadership style on employee’s performance. A
causal research design was used to carry out this research. Middle management employees ‘from
services sector at different of location in Klang Valley was used. To do this, respondents from a
hearing aid company was chosen. Each respondent should have worked more than 5 years in the
field. A Likert scale from 1-5 was used to collect data, where the questionnaire was tested for its face,
content and construct validity along with reliability of the construct. A sample size of two hundred
and fifty (250) respondents was used using non-probability convenient sampling method. Regression
analysis was conducted to analyses the data using SPSS 21. The result shows that autocratic and
democratic leadership style has positive and significant impact on employee performance. However
we found that laissez-fair leadership style have no significant influence on employee performance.
This suggests that leaders with extremely distinguished styles have more influences on employee
performance as it is more evident throughout their interaction with the immediate supervisor.
Therefore, leaders could adopt innovative strategies using suitable leadership style in order to
achieve work performance at the very best level as well as to gain the long-term success. Therefore
we concluded that the autocratic leadership is useful in the short term and democratic leadership
style is useful in all time horizons to improve employee performance. Future research could consider
employees reporting immediate supervisors for last five years to ensure more constructive feedback
about the leadership style practices by the managers. Also the study should cover a larger sample
using more systematic sampling technique to generalize the result.
Key Terms: Leadership Style, autocratic, democratic and laissez-fair leadership style, employee
performance
Many researches, in the past examined the performance and factors affecting
employee performance. One of the dominant key factor that have been discussed in the past
researches were leadership such as participative, autocratic, and democratic (Iqbal et al,
2015). Similarly many researches were done to examine the performance and how it was
affected by various leadership styles. Most of the studies were highly lacking the data
collected on Malaysian context, especially on employees performance and leadership style in
commercial service such as ear hearing service providers. The three leadership style was
considered as dominant in the past literature, although no research was conducted to examine
these styles in the hearing aid sector’s working managers to examine at what extent the style
of leadership affected its employees. (Iqbal et al , 2015).)
To achieve the aim of this study, the following objectives are formulated
To examine the impact of autocratic leadership Style on Employee Performances
To examine the impact of democratic leadership Style on Employee Performances
To examine the impact of laisses-fair leadership style on Employee Performances
The rest of the paper is organised with four section. The next section will focus on literature
review, followed by research methods and data collection procedures, data analysis and
discussions and conclusion & recommendations.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Leadership is the most cogitating and investigate at organizational variable, the leader
has a potential impact on employee performance (Cummings & Schwab, 1973). The concept
of leadership is originally developed in folk psychology to explain the factor of leadership
style impact on employee (Jaskaran & Sri-Guru, 2014). Leadership is the process by which
a person exerts influence over people and inspires, motivates, and directs their activities to
help achieve group or organizational goals (Jones & George, 2004). Leadership is essentially
a process in which one individual or sometimes a small group of individuals influences the
efforts of others towards the achievement of goals in a given set of circumstances (Cole,
2005). Leadership style is a pattern of behaviours which engaged in by leader when dealing
with employee. Lewin, Leppit, and White (1939) acknowledged three leadership styles such
as autocratic, democratic and Laissez-Faire. Vigoda-Gadot (2007) argued that , every leader
in their organization and operations practices particular leadership style where such styles is
referred as a set of the behaviour patterns, leadership frequently occurs during the constant
organizational work and others knows leaders by leadership. The manager of the
organization is in very cooperation with the employee, the leadership style of these managers
Leadership style is the most dominant factors that impact employees’ attitudes and
behaviours including organizational commitment. Leadership can be defined as the capacity
to impact a group of employees’ decision, behaviour, recognition of the goal, and work with
confidence and zeal (Adair, 2002). Leader is required to develop the future vision, to
motivate the organizational members, and to achieve the visions and to improve the
performance (Adair, 2002). According to Adair (2002) leadership is the ability to encourage
others to seek out and defined objectives enthusiastically. It is the human factor which binds
a group together and to improve their performance and to direct them towards goals
(Koudri,1999). Also it was suggested that leadership is to deal and cope with change, focus
on the long-term and the big picture, not always keep to save him/herself to take risks, and
concentrating on people and their values, not just only the bottom-line (Koudri, 1999).
The main goal of any organization is to enhance the employee’s job performance that
it could survive in this highly competitive environment. Performance is a multidimensional
construct and an extremely vital criterion that determines organizational successes or failures
(Prasetya & Kato, 2011 July). According to Niranjana and Pattanayak (2005), the
performance of an employee is the result and behavior on a task which can be observed and
evaluated. Niranjana and Pattanayak (2005) also argued that employee performance is the
contribution made by an individual in the accomplishment of organizational goals.
Employee performance can be simply the result of the patterns of action, and bring it out to
satisfy an objective (Ibrahim, Al Sejini, & Al Qassimi, 2004). According to some researches
employee performance consists of directly observable actions of an employee, and also
related to either mental actions or products, such as the answers and decisions (Ibrahim et al
2004). This results in organizational attainment of goals. Ibrahim et al (2004) defined job
performance as an important activity that provides both the goals and methods to achieve the
organizational goals.
Since leadership is one of the key issues that organisation faces and attributes to its
success and failures, a vast majority of literature , in the past, have focus on examining the
impact of leadership and its effects on employee performance or organisational performance.
The similar significant number of studies also has done over in Malaysia. The table below
shows some of the key researches done on Malaysian context in examining the impact of
leadership and its impact on employee performance.
From the past literature, it is obvious that the dominant three style of leadership are
autocratic, democratic, and laisses-faire style of leadership. Therefore these three styles will
be reviewed.
Swarup (2013) argued that autocratic leadership style is a classified leadership style.
It’s a style of leadership where a manager is the most powerful entity and it is the primary
decision maker (Gordon, 2013). This style of leadership is based on the traditional premise
that leaders are good managers who direct and control their people. Autocratic leadership
style should be adapted to the characteristics of the leader, the subordinate, and the nature of
the situation (Mullins, 2007). Mullins (2007) described autocratic leadership is appropriate
H1: Autocratic Leadership Style has a positive significant impact on employee performance
The Democratic Leader acts to value inputs and commitment via participation, listening
to both the bad and the good news (Lewin et al, 1939). Smith (1998) asserted that the
democratic leaders have a good relationship with the employee results the effectiveness will
and high employee performance. Anderson (1991) also described that democratic leaders as
one who shares decision making with the other members and therefore, democratic leadership
is connected with higher morale. He denied that democratic leadership is associated with low
productivity and high morale and that authoritarian leadership is associated with high
productivity and low morale. Daft (2014) also argued that democratic leader delegates
authority to others to encourages to make employee own decisions and mostly relies on
subordinates’ knowledge to complete the task. The group members have a greater to say in
decision-making, determination of policy, implementation of systems and procedures
(Mullins, 2007). Jooste and Fourie (2009) argued that democratic leadership leads to
improve productivity and job satisfaction. Democratic Leadership style is one of the most
effective leadership style that leads to higher productivity, better contributions from group
members, and increased group morale (Anderson, 1991). Under democratic leadership, the
superiors allows the subordinates to use their abilities to initiative and make contributions
(Anderson, 1991). The leaders also offer support to the subordinates in accomplishing tasks
(Igbaekemen &Odivwri, 2015). In this style, managers’ enable employees to make
suggestions and recommendations on major issues and give subordinates full control and
responsibility for those tasks, encourage subordinates to become good leaders and involved in
leadership and employee development (Iqbal et al 2015). This style provides confidence to
employees who will help them for meeting deadlines, and departmental goals, to provide
efficient team inputs (Iqbal et al, 2015).
H2: Democratic Leadership Style has a positive significant impact on employee performance
H3: Laissez Faire Leadership Style has positive significant impact on employee performance
The study engaged 216 employees from 6 organizations in Klang Valley, Malaysia.
The majority of the respondents were female 138 (63.9%) and male 78 (36.10%). The ethic
of the Chinese is 112 respondents constituted 51.90%, Malay 62 respondent constituted
28.7%, and 25 Indian respondents constituted 11.6%. It is clear that the 94 (43.5% )
respondents are from age group 21-30 years, 70 (32.4%) respondents are from aged group
of 31-40 years old, and 41 to 50 years is about 39 respondents with 18.10%. There 119
marriage respondents (55.10%) and 90 people (41.70%) still single. In terms of education
level, result show that 97 respondents (36.60%) were bachelor’s degree holder or professional
degree, and 52 respondents (24.10%) just graduated from some of college. In terms of work
experience, 70 employees (32.40%) has work experience of 5 years, 65 respondents (30.10%
) have worked 6 to 10 years, and 27 respondents (12.5%) has worked more than 11 years to
15 years. In terms of income , 74 respondents (34.3%) earned a salary of RM2500.00 to
RM5000.00. About 73 (33.8%) respondents earned less than RM2500.00. 41 people (19%)
earned a salary ranged from RM5000.00 to RM10,000.00 per month.
Procedures
The sample consisted of participants from 6 (six) hearing aid companies. Cochran's
test was used to determine sample size. Sample size of 235 employees was calculated with a
confidence level of 94%. The combined workforce of these companies is approximately
more than 250 staff. Therefore we distributed 250 copies in the Leadership Style
Random sampling method is also used. Simple random sampling was used and
respondents from each department of each company was selected using a lottery. Data
Processing and data analysis involved data coding and analysis (Gatara, 2010 cited in Suzan,
2016). Data analysis was done using quantitative approaches. Descriptive statistics such as
mean and percentages were applied in the data analysis. The results were presented using
tables with explanations on all parameters used. The descriptive statistical method was
applied to analyses quantitative data where data were scored by calculating the percentages,
means and standard deviation.
Research Instrument
Questionnaire was designed to gather the data. It consists of three parts: A, B, and C.
Part – A: deals with demographic details such as sex, education, age, etc.
Part – B: consists of 18 statements to measure the leadership styles of autocratic,
democratic, and laisses faire from employee perspectives
Part-C: Five (5) items to measure employee performance such as productivity,
punctuality, teamwork, skill improvement and efficiency.
The table above shows the overall perception of three different leadership behaviour
of the managers from employee perspectives. Democratic leadership is considered as the
most practiced or displayed behaviour with a mean value of 3.64 (SD=0.682), followed by
laissez-faire with a mean value of 3.37 (SD=0.55) followed by autocratic leadership
behaviour with a mean value of 3.12 (SD=0.63) indicating the least displayed leadership
behaviour is autocratic among the managers. Employee performance scored a mean value of
3.76 (SD=0.65) suggesting that employee performance was seen as high among the
employees.
Correlations
Table 4: Correlation Analysis
Variables Employee performance Autocratic Democratic Laissez-Faires
Employee Performance 1
Autocratic 0.137* 1
Democratic 0.311** -0.130 1
Laissez-faires 0.144* 0.174* 0.446** 1
*.Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed)
**.Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2 tailed)
Landau and Everitt (2004) listed that the correlation coefficients range which from “-
1” to “+1” representing perfect negative and positive correlation. Ringim, et.al. (2012)
stated that the general rule of thumb the value should not more than 0.75, similar correlations
of 0.8 or higher are suggested problematic. Any correlation coefficient that is within -1.00 or
+1.00 indicates a perfect correlation between the variables (Hair et al, 2011). Therefore,
variables that are found with Pearson r value that is closer to “-1.00 or +1.00” will be
identified as perfectly related.
The table above suggests that all the leadership styles have a significant and positive
relationship with employee performance. Also laissez-faire style is significant and positively
associated with all the other leadership styles.
Regressions
The general rules of thumb a good fit is considered to predict a minimum of 60%
variation of the dependent variable (Zygnont & Smith, 2014). According to the above table
adjusted R Square is 0.118. Therefore, this model is considered to be a poor fit and it is not a
good fit. The Durbin-Watson statistic (Montgomery, Peck, & Vining, 2001) defined between
According to the table above, autocratic leadership style beta coefficient value is
0.191 with a significant value of 0.005 which is lower than 0.05 (Van Vugt & De Cremer,
1999). Hence the autocratic leadership style is found to have a positive significant impact on
employee performance. Bass (1990) has noticed that Autocratic leadership mostly acts as
controlling, directing, or coercive leader, who seldom takes decisions basing on input from
their subordinates. Employees fell under pressure reported autocratic supervision on the part
of their leaders. However, Dawson (2002) stated that the autocratic style may show great
results in a short time period. H1: (Accepted)
Democratic leadership style has a beta coefficient value of 0.358 with a significant
value of 0.000 which is lower than 0.01 (Van Vugt & De Cremer, 1999). Hence the
Democratic leadership style is found to have a positive and significant impact on employee
performance. Lewin et al (1939) found that democratic leadership style in which members of
the group take a more participative role in the decision-making process, given the opportunity
to participate, ideas are exchanged freely, and discussion is encouraged. However, Akpala
(1993) argued, democratic leadership is claimed to be earliest amongst all other leadership
styles. Yet, Iqbal et al (2015) stated that the democratic leadership style is usually considered
a benefit for the most companies. This style focuses the management that provides guidance
and help to its team and departments while accepting and receiving the inputs from individual
team members. H2: (Accepted)
Laissez Faire leadership style as shown in the table above beta coefficient value is -
0.048 with a significant value of 0.515 which is higher than 0.05 (Van Vugt & De Cremer,
1999). Hence Laissez Faire leadership style is found to have a Negative insignificant impact
on employee performance. According to Ismail, Hussain, and Rashid, (2011) employees who
were allowed to make their own decision would have higher levels of commitment to the
organization. However, Van Vugt et al (2004) argued that Laissez-Faire leader has no
control mechanism for group members by giving freedom to employees is perceived as a
situation in their favour. H3: (Rejected)
5. CONCLUSION
we have identified that the first and two variables which autocratic and democratic
leadership style have a positive and significant impact towards employee’s performance
resulting in these extreme leadership styles can impact on an employee’s performance on
either good or bad ways. However, the Laissez Faire leadership style has a significant
negative impact on employee performance.
A strong leadership positive impact an autocratic style, it can take charge of the
group, assign tasks to different subordinate, and establish solid deadlines for projects to be
finished. The subordinates may accept an autocratic style. It allows employees of the group
Recommendations
The following recommendations were made:
For Employees:
o To be provide more professional image in the service line. The internal
employee need learn how to self-upgrades and at the same time, seriously
take the responsible for the each of duty.
o To be working more independently. As an executive level to middle
management, leadership needs to seriously review at their work scope, in
order to follow the regulation system of management.
o To be more communication, in order to become closer relationship. All the
branch leaders, managers, or executive need to work closer with the team as to
know clearer about the condition for the daily, weekly and monthly process,
at the same time, can be straightly to know about the work fall, directly to
solve the issue of each of the team members.
o To be seriously applied the punishment at the employee who didn’t care and
work seriously, and follow the instruction of the company. If they are a
person who unable to stop long this, didn’t respect or didn’t care about the
assign work.
For Leaders or Managers
o The manager could pay more attention and give clear direction to the
subordinate who could steer employees toward a vision firmly that exists in all
the departments.
Limitations
The main limitation observed is related to the sample size of the study. All the
respondents were from a single service field, which could influence their work performance
and reward perceptions due to its practices and other factors. The results cannot be universal
or generalize the finding across all the industries or even the own industry due to the limited
companies involved.
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