Probing the Leadership Style on Employee Satisfaction in Service Sector

 


Leadership creates a strong impact on the attitude of the employees working in the organization. In the present context, however, the roles of leaders have changed to a great extent. The success of an organization relies on the leadership styles being followed by the leaders of the organization.  As effective leaders provide proper direction and lead to followers for achieving the desired goals; the employees having high job satisfaction become able to perform effectively and pursue organizational interests (Sarwar, et al., 2015).

According to Northouse (2007), leadership is considered as a practice through which a leader influences a group of people or followers to achieve collective goals. In the present scenario, leaders do not rely on their appropriate authority to influence the followers to perform or follow what has been ordered to them, but they prefer to be interested in collaborating with their subordinates and increase and extend the interest of their subordinates (Northouse, 2015).

There are various types of leadership styles being used by the leaders in accordance with the organizational environment to deal with the employees in accordance. The present study intends to identify the relationship association leadership styles and employee job satisfaction. 

Since 1990 following mentioned two types of leadership approaches presented by (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985) were the most important and were most widely used and tested for the leadership

                                                                         Leadership Types


1. Transactional Leadership:

2. Transformational Leadership


Transactional Leadership:

Transactional leadership, also known as managerial leadership, is a leadership style where leaders rely on rewards and punishments to achieve optimal job performance from their subordinates.  Transaction means exchange and transactional leadership deals with the exchange between the leaders and their subordinate.

These exchanges involve four dimensions:

1.      Contingent Rewards: Transactional leaders link the goal to rewards, clarify expectations, provide necessary resources, set mutually agreed upon goals, and provide various kinds of rewards for successful performance. They set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) goals for their subordinates.

2. Active Management by Exception: Transactional leaders actively monitor the work of their subordinates, watch for deviations from rules and standards and taking corrective action to prevent mistakes.

3.      Passive Management by Exception: Transactional leaders intervene only when standards are not met or when the performance is not as per the expectations. They may even use punishment as a response to unacceptable performance.

4.      Laissez-faire: The leader provides an environment where the subordinates get many opportunities to make decisions. The leader himself abdicates responsibilities and avoids making decisions and therefore the group often lacks direction.

                                                                      

 

 According to Naidu & Van der walt (2005) this is a leader-follower exchange based leadership in-which leader exchange rewards or punishment with the follower for the task performed, and in return expects productivity, efforts and loyalty from the follower. Transactional leaders, on the part of satisfying their own self-interest practice control strategies to get subordinates to perform in the preferred way (Kanungo, 2001). Transactional leaders become less engaging, less appealing and become mediocre when transact with subordinates by rewards concentrated on realizing the work achieved, or concentrating on their mistakes, or delaying in making decisions, or avoiding to interfere until something has happened (Howell & Avolio, 1993).

Transformational Leadership:

According to Burns (1978) transformational leadership is perceived when leaders encourage their subordinates to increase the level of their beliefs, morals, perceptions, motivations and coalitions with organizations objectives. Transformational leadership is such an engaging and inspiring relationship between leader and subordinates that enables subordinates to seriously examine the current assumptions and inspire them to think across new directions (Krishnan, 2012) and causes subordinates to give their appreciation, loyalty, obedience and trust to their leaders and to assigned tasks without any questioning (Yukl, 2006). Transformational leaders show confidence and respect in their subordinates and have the ability to influence their subordinate’s behaviour in such a way that results in more work fulfilment and positive organizational outcomes (Givens, 2008). They help their subordinates to be productive, innovative and creative and adaptable to the various environmental conditions within organization (Furkan, Kara, Tascan, & Avsalli, 2010) and try to prevent the chances of work related problems (Berson & Avolio, 2004).

According to Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership, Theory and Practice (7th ed.) there are four factors which can serve as a starting place for test driving transformational leadership. 

Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction defined by Wicker (2011) is a sense of pride and inner fulfilment achieved when doing a particular job. Hoppock (1935) in his book presented the idea of job satisfaction as a theoretical construct as being any number of mental, physiological, and environmental situations which prompts to a person to express fulfilment with their occupation. It is a positive psychological state that emerges when individuals evaluate their work and work experience (Poon J. M., 2003). According to Spector, (1997) job fulfilment is what individual feel about their job either they like or dislike their job, liking shows the satisfaction or disliking shows the dissatisfaction of employees. Literature reveals that job satisfaction is affected by various factors. Spector (1997) develop “job satisfaction measuring scale” to evaluate the level of satisfaction of employees regarding their job which covers various factors like pay, benefits, supervision; promotion, nature of work, and co-workers. If employees get the salary, benefits, promotion, nature of work, supervision and co-workers they want they will possibly be more satisfied and will also like to stay with organization.

Creating a high-performance workforce has become increasingly important, and to do so, business leaders must be able to inspire organizational members to go beyond their task requirements. Both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that add value.

 


References:

* Impact of leadership style on job satisfaction and organizational commitments-Sawar A at al 2015-International review of Management and business Review - www.irmbrjournal.com

*Leadership theory and practices Peter G  (2007) , 2016 Editions

* Burns J M (1978)Leadership Newyork:Harper and Row

*Bernard M Bass -(1986),The Transformational Model of Leadership- 7th chapter

*Naidu & Van der walt (2005) An Exploration of the relationship between leadership style

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