Effect of Leadership On Employee

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Effect of leadership on employee

Introduction:
Leadership has its own importance in any organization. Leaders have power to magnify
the growth of the business. According to Vasileva and Datta(2021) leadership style plays
a crucial role in employee's performance. On the other hand, we know employees are the
basic working unit. Their performance has direct impact on the productivity of the
business. Motivated workforce is the key factor for organization success. In this study we
try to understand the relationship between employee motivation and the leadership style
of the business. Stated by Kuar and See(2022) motivation of employees defines their
tendencies and ability to accomplish goal. Which is closely related to the behavior of
their leaders.

Research objective:
In this study we aim to observe the relationship of employee's motivation with leadership
style. As we know leadership and motivated work force, both are crucial for a successful
business. This study helps the organization to opt useful leadership style and also enhance
the motivation of their employee. According to Barbuto (2005) three types of leadership
include transformational, transactional and charismatic style present. We try to elaborate
all of them for the general objective of this studies.

Problem statement:
 Determine and define different leadership styles opt by the organizations.
 Is there any relationship existing between leadership style and employee
motivation?

Literature review:
Leadership is an old phenomenon as well as most popular phenomenon, many scholars
tried to define this concept. According to Water (2022) leader is someone who empower
his subordinates to accomplish their goals. Ibrahim and Daniel (2019) define it as an art
of influencing people, so they willingly strive to achieve the organizational goals. Uysal
(2021) described leadership as a process to deliver organizational vision to its employees
for encouragement to adopt organizational vision. According to Sougui et al. (2016)
process to influence individual or group of individual to move in a specific direction by
an individual or group of individuals is known as leadership.
Different approaches adopt by the organizations to accomplish common goals with the
help of employees are known as leadership styles (Okpamen,2017). A variety of
leadership styles available in business world including transformational, transactional
laissez-fair leadership, charismatic leadership, autocratic and democratic leadership style
(Naile, & Selesho,2014). Pratt (2017) mentioned different leadership style as
bureaucratic, technocratic, transactional, charismatic, laissez-fairs, democratic,
situational, innovative and transformational.

Transformational leadership: the most famous style of leadership is known as


transformational style of leadership. According to Studiosguy (n.a) Bass transformational
leadership theory elaborates the role of leader as inspirational figure in the organization.
In which leaders try to transform their employees by increasing their understanding
towards important tasks, keep organizational interest above individual interest. Barbuto
(2005) explained transformational leadership style as the most effective style as most
influencing leaders who enhance the motivation and citizenship of employees towards the
organization. He characterized it as follows:

 inspirational motivation:

transformational leaders demonstrated innovation, motivation and commitment to the


common goals. So, they influenced their sub ordinates with the help of their self-
qualities.

 intellectual stimulation:

transformational leaders stimulate creativity in their organization. They try to find new
ways to resolve problems.

 individualized consideration:

transformational leader gave importance to employee's interest promptly. They establish


proper two-way communication to know need and necessities of their employees.

Transactional leadership: According to Sougui et al. (2016) in this type of leadership


style, leaders meet their subordinates needs by exchanging values. Further they elaborate
that leader expect from employees to attain common goals without encouraging personal
development. It means they try to develop give and take relationship with employees.
Oteno et al. (2022) described transactional leader as a boss who gave reward or
disciplines on the basis of his employees. Kalambayi et al. (2021) considered this type of
leadership style as highly motivating leadership approach for short term results. Leaders
offered reduced working hours, bonus, cash rewards in exchanged of completion of tasks,
on other hand, penalties and deduction in pay resulted when employees failed to achieve
the goals.

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Yscout (2021) briefly described the characteristics of transactional leaders as follows:

 leaders must be ensuring the monitoring of procedures to achieve the


organizational goals.
 Goals and rewards must be interlinked.
 Leaders should motivate employees by giving them reward according to their
performance.

Charismatic leadership style: Weber (1947) firstly introduced the phenomenon of


charismatic leadership style. He introduces it as idealized leader who influence his
subordinate with his personal traits. Lee (2021) defines it as a leadership style in which
leader influence his employees with his persuasiveness, communication skill and charm.
Charismatic leaders have following common characteristics:

 Strong communication skill

Charismatic leaders have ability to communicate their strengths very well to portray an
ideal image of them.

 Highly energetic

A special quality of leader is to be energetic to motivate his employees and subordinates.

 Highly motivated

In business world motivation creates huge difference for the organization. Charismatic
leaders are highly motivated. So, they also enhance the motivation level in employees.

 Confident

The quality of confidence is essential for the leaders. As they are in a position to take
some crucial decisions in organization. Charismatic leader has the ability to take bold
decisions confidently.

 Optimistic

Optimistic person always thinks positive about the future. Charismatic leader try to fix
the problem with the help of their optimistic behavior.

Charismatic and transformational leadership may have many similarities but they are not
exactly same. Avolio and Yammarino(2013) discussed the difference between
transformational leadership and charismatic leadership. The main difference is
charismatic leaders focus on their own skillset but transformational leaders focus on the
shared vision with their employee. So, we can say all transformational leaders are
charismatic leaders but not all charismatic leaders are transformational leaders.

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Employee's motivation:

The remarkable attitude of employees towards their work is known as employee's


motivation. Dutta (2022) defines motivation as goal-directed voluntary efforts due to
intrinsic or extrinsic forces. On this basis she gave two types of motivation:

 Intrinsic motivation:

This type of motivation developed by the internal factors of an individual. It emerged


when employee feel satisfied or internal happiness after completing their tasks.

 Extrinsic motivation:

This type of emotion emerged when employee expect some rewards or appreciation after
completion of tasks.

According to Adair (2007) motivation is employee's willingness to do something. Jain et


al. (2019) explained motivation as behavior of employees that urge them to execute their
job task with excellency.

Many theories regarding employee's motivation are available which include Maslow's
hierarchy of needs, Herzberg's two-factors theory, McGregor's X and Y theory,
expectancy theory

Maslow's hierarchy of need theory:

Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who described the individual's hierarchy of needs.
He gave assumption that individuals are motivated by their needs.

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(Source: Mcleod, 2007)

As explained by Mcleod (2007) this theory divided needs of an individual in following


five categories:

 physiological need: it contains basic needs of an individual include food, water


and sleep.
 safety needs:

Second level of this hierarchy include shelter and security issues.

 love and belonging:

Next level of need of an individual is to be social, belonging and love.

 esteem:

Self esteem is another level of individual need. Positive self-image and status.

 self-actualization:

Top of the pyramid Maslow placed self-actualization means that an individual desire to
be. This feeling of individual full filled by creativity and innovations.

Research philosophy:
Research philosophy described the complete guidelines to conduct any study.
Researchers identified different types of research philosophy including:

Interpretivism: an approach that deals with the social behavior. Researcher try to
evaluate the respondent's behavior

Positivism: in this approach researcher scientifically prove the research objective.


Experiments conducted in this type of research philosophy.

Critical realism: A research type in which research conducted in natural setting. It is an


expensive approach as it is used natural settings for the research.

As far as this research we used interpretivisms type of research philosophy.

Research approach:
Researchers used two approaches to conduct research inductive and deductive approach.
When researcher develop new theory to analyses relation between behaviors of
respondents it is called inductive reasoning. When they explained and prove already
existing theory, they called this type of research as deductive approach.

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In this study we use inductive approach as we want to find relation between two
variables. We use inductive approach to find the leadership effect on employee
motivation.

Research strategy:
Research strategy include ethnography and grounded theory strategies, ethnography deals
with scientific culture and conducted through interviews and surveys. While in
grounded theory, researchers try to find the relation and impact among different
variables. So, we use grounded theory to find the effect of leadership on employee
motivation.

Ethical Aspects:
All researchers has some ethical guidelines also to conduct their research, that must be
fulfilled by them. Following are the key points of ethical aspects:

 Anonymity:

There is no need to gather personal data of respondents. Because researcher should


maintain anonymity for respondents' identity.

 Confidentiality:

All information collected in any research must not be shared with any outsider. It is
responsibility of researcher to maintain confidentiality.

 Volunteer participation:

All respondents have a right to freely participate in research. There must not be any
pressure exerted by researchers for the participation.

 Informed consent:

Researchers must inform the respondents about good and bad side of the research. So,
they can decide to participate or not.

Research methodology:
Research methodology informed the readers about the method of data collection and how
it is managed. There are four known types of data including:

Observational data:

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data which is gathered by observations, generally used in social sciences.

Compiled data: when the researcher need data of large number of respondents, like
population of the town and literacy rate for specific area. An expensive method for the
collection of data.

Experimental data: when the data is collected by conducting some experiment or in


controlled environment.

Simultaneous data: this type of data collected in general world for example weather
information of the area etc.

Data collection method:


In research study, researchers categorized two type of data collection method one is
primary and other is secondary.

Primary data: when data is collected by questionnaires, interviews and surveys, it is


known as primary data.

Secondary data: when the researcher collected data from existing sources like, journals,
books and online resources. It is called as secondary data.

We use secondary data from reliable resources for this study.

Analysis and recommendation:


In this study we collected secondary data to find the effect of leadership on employee
motivation. Many researchers worked to find the relationship between these two variables
(Souguie et al. 2016; Uysal, 2021; Naile & Selesho, 2014). Different scholars identified
leadership style which are effective for employee motivation including transformational,
transactional, charismatic and laisses-fairs leadership style (Pratt, 2017 ; Naile & Selsho,
2014).

According to Studiosguyv(n.a) , Barbuto (2005) explained the transformational


leadership style. Originally it is given by Burn (1975) in his book named as Leadership.
They consider it as most influential leadership style to motivate employee. While sougui
et al. (2017), Oteno et al. (2021) and Kalamby et al. (2022) considered transactional
leadership style more appropriate to enhance the employee motivation. Other influential
leadership style is charismatic leadership style( Weber, 1947; Lee, 2021)

As discussed by Macleod (2017) motivation of employee increases when he fulfilled, the


needs step by step given by Herzberg's hierarchy of need theory. All types of leadership
styles has impact on employee's motivation.

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Findings: After the review analysis of literature, we can say motivation of employee
influenced by the leadership style ( Vasilea & Datta, 2021; Obasan & Banjo, 2014;
UKEssays, 2018).

Recommendations: it is recommended to conduct study specifically by collecting


primary data to visualize clearer picture of this relationship. We also recommended a
blend of leadership style to significantly enhance the employee motivation.

Conclusion:
The ultimate goal of an organization is to play an important role in wellbeing of humans
also. In business world motivated employees are the true asset of the organization. For
the success of any business, they need a force, that is eagerly want to perform for their
organization. Organizations must know all the factors that increases or decreases
employee motivation. As for this study the appropriate leadership approach is necessary
to attain employee's motivation.

All three discussed types of leadership which are transformational, transactional and
charismatic leadership, equally important regarding employee motivation. Organization
can adopt one or more than one leadership style to enhance the motivation of employee.

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