Managing Organizational Behavior - Essay Example

? LEADERSHIP AND JOB-SATISFACTION Managing behaviour in Organization …………………. College/ ………….. …………. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ………………………………………………………………….. 3 Research Contexts …………………………………………………… 3 Framing of the Research …………………………………………….. 4 Statement of Research Objectives……………………………………. 5 Key terms ……………………………………………………………. 5 1- Leadership ……………………………………………….. 5 2- Job-satisfaction …………………………………………… 6 3- Turnover intention ……………………………………….. 7 Literature review ……………………………………………………………… 7 Leadership styles ……………………………………………………… 7 Correlation between leadership style and job satisfaction ……………. 9 Transformational Leadership: Positively impacting job-satisfaction…… 10 Personality characteristics between leadership style and job …………… 13 Research methodology …………………………………………………………. 15 Explanatory research ……………………………………………………. 15 Research Process ……………………………………………………….. 15 Observation …………………………………………………….. 16 Data gathering and Analysis …………………………………… 16 Developing Hypothesis ………………………………………… 16 Major findings …………………………………………………………………. 17 Leadership styles and job satisfaction correlated ………………………. 17 Transformational leadership and its impact on job satisfaction………… 18 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………… 19 Recommendation for further study …………………………………….. 19 References . …………………………………………………………………….. 20 INTRODUCTION Human capital is most valuable and powerful asset as well as an extremely important factor for effectiveness and efficiency in an organization. Business organizations are social systems that require efficient leaders to lead others, especially in today’s highly complex business contexts as businesses face tremendous challenges including globalization of markets, rapid technological advances, hostile takeovers, economic uncertainty etc. One of the very significant factors determining business success is employee satisfaction as well as their performance and therefore most businesses in recent days give greater emphasis on those leadership strategies that can foster employee satisfaction and thus to retain and attract high-performing employees. Leadership is essentially a highly-valued commodity. Most management and business experts ask themselves what makes good leaders and which leadership quality keeps employees more satisfied. A manager or a leader can perhaps manage a single event in different ways, but it is highly important that this should never bring adverse impacts on employee performance and their satisfaction in order to ensure they fully cooperate in doing the tasks. Research Contexts As business environments are becoming more turbulent and rigorously competitive, it is critical that businesses adopt management and leadership strategies that can lead to large scale changes. Transformational change, reengineering and quality management are some of the recent developments (Politis, 2005, p. 203) that suggest large-scale changes with people-centered ideology so that growing issues like employee dissatisfaction, stress, employee turnover can be effectively addressed and managed. Leadership is an important organizational element that plays vital role in business success. As it is a managerial function, characterized by social interaction, it can influence human resources in a firm to achieve organizational goals. More specifically, achieving organizational goals like creating a high-performing-work environment and sustainable competitive advantage depends on leadership style that its leaders adopt. There can certainly be a positive correlation between leadership style and job satisfaction. Job satisfaction, in turn, is a critical factor that helps an employee perform well, become highly productive, stay long in the same organization, improve working attitudes etc. A better leadership style thus result in a number of positive outcomes including high-performance, employee satisfaction and productivity. This research paper relates to the above mentioned correlation between leadership and job satisfaction. This paper is an attempt to explain what is job satisfaction and how this can positively be impacted by a better leadership method. Framing of the Research Basic terms like leadership, job satisfaction etc are detailed in the introduction part of the research paper, in order to help readers get an overview of the main topic being debated. The literature review part presents various literatures on how leadership affects job satisfaction and eventually other factors like performance, turn over and job-stress etc. Various literatures will be covered to help list major findings. The personality characteristics between leadership style and the level of job satisfaction will be detailed based on literatures. The research will be done based on secondary data, collected from relevant books and journals. Literature reviews in the second part will be used to explore newer ideas in relation to the correlation between leadership styles and employee job satisfaction. Based on the literatures, the researcher attempts to find how leadership and job-satisfaction are related, how personality characteristic influence the level or job satisfaction and turn over intention etc. Statement of Research Objectives This research paper aims to Explain what is leadership and job satisfaction and detail how these two correlate each other, Identify which leadership style can enhance employees job-satisfaction level, Address the issues of job satisfaction and its influence on turnover intention, and find which leadership style may affect the turnover intention, Explain the effect of personality characteristics between leadership and job-satisfaction, To examine how leadership style, job satisfaction and personality characteristics may influence turnover intention Key terms 1- Leadership Leadership is a process of guiding the behaviour and attitude of others towards organizational objectives. A person with leadership quality would be able to influence his subordinates to behave in a particular way and manner and to follow some specific instructions due to his guiding. According to a definition, given by Daft (00) in his work, “leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes and outcomes that reflect their shared purposes” (p. 4). Leadership is basically influence that occurs among people. Rost (1993) emphasized that every words in the above mentioned definition of leadership were carefully considered and selected to convey very specific meanings that include certain values and assumptions (p. 102). Leadership necessarily involves influence, intention, followers, change, shared purposes, personally responsibility and integrity. Leadership is a process that involves numerous different types of acts (Wart, 2007, p. 23). A leader works with people, influence them, with technical competence to achieve certain results. A manager is required to deal with administering relevant activities in an organization where as a leader is required to deal with innovative ideologies and bring newer things to be accomplished. 2- Job-satisfaction Job-satisfaction and employee-satisfaction are commonly used interchangeably. Job satisfaction is the general attitudes of an employee towards a particular job (Byars and Rue, 2008, p. 238). Mathis and Jackson (2007) stressed that job satisfaction is a positive emotional state that results from evaluating an employee’s job experience. When an employee’s expectations are not met, he feels dissatisfied with his job (p. 70). When all employees are paid a uniform incentives or same increase in their pay, they don’t feel they are rewarded and these are not good motivational tools. If employees receive increase in pay according to their performance, it will certainly have a positive impact on their satisfaction with job. As more and more an employee being motivated, the more likely he to be satisfied with his job. Many factors influence the level of job-satisfaction. Work, working environment, pay, promotion opportunities, management behaviour, leadership styles, equal opportunity, organizational culture and co-workers’ attitude are some of the significant factors that can influence the level of job satisfaction. As Byars and Rue (2008) pointed out, the five major components of job satisfaction are : a) attitude towards work group, b) general working conditions, c) attitude towards the organization, d) attitude towards management and e) monetary benefits (p. 238). 3- Turnover intention As the word means, turn over intention is the perception of an employee to quit his present job. Job satisfaction negatively impacts an employee’s thought to leave his job. Similarly, loyalty and professional respect impacts negatively on turnover intention, whereas contribution may positively impact on it (Graen and Graen, 2005, p. 184). LITERATURE REVIEW Leadership styles The main two variables, namely leadership and job satisfaction are closely related. To come to the core of the research, it is important to outline various styles of leadership and to draw how they each affect employees or their attitudes. Leadership influences the level of employee’s job-satisfaction. What leadership style influences job satisfaction positively and what styles influence them negatively are quite unknown. There are different types of leadership styles like transformational, charismatic, participative, situational, transactional, the quiet leader and servant leadership (changingminds.org, 2010). Charismatic leadership is the ability of leader who derived leadership authority through some unknown and god-given gift to him, and his ability seems to be divine (Sashkin, p. 56). Charismatic leaders make an emotional impact on subordinates as they appeal both of their hearts and minds (Daft, 2007). As Daft and Lane (2009) pointed out, transformational leadership is similar to charismatic leadership, but they are distinguished by their special ability to develop innovative ideas and bring changes to the organization by recognizing subordinate’s needs and concerns, by helping them solve old issues in newer strategies and encouraging them to question the status quo (p. 424). Griffin and Moorhead (2009) viewed that transformational leadership mainly focuses on differences between leading for change and leading for stability (p. 335). More specifically, a transformational leader will be a good visionary who inspires his followers and injects enthusiasm and energy to others to get them do things. Their style is that they develop vision and put passion and energy in to things they would like to do through others. Transactional leaders are those who clarify the roles and tasks-related requirements of their followers, provide appropriate rewards and try to meet their social needs as well (Daft and Lane, 2009, p. 424). Participative leaders are those who indulge in decision making and they understand issues more clearly and work with others to accomplish joint goals. Rather than being autocratic, he thinks to become involved in decision making as well as helping others to do things. Situational leaders are those who act appropriately according to the best situations. Quiet Leader is one who is strongly task-oriented and therefore gives credit on others rather than feeling of his own ego. Servant Leaders are those who have responsibility for the subordinates and for the society and thus they serve others in good manners, rather than their followers serving them (changingminds.org, 2010). Correlation between leadership style and job satisfaction A number of researches have shown that job satisfaction, employee performance, productivity and organizational commitment are affected by leadership behaviour and styles. Loke (2001) analyzed leadership styles and its impacts on employees in a number of hospitals in Singapore. Due to various factors like downturn of Asian economy and significant decrease of patience, there was a threat among healthcare employees about their job-cuts. But, it was observed that the leadership of healthcare managers played significant roles in delivering high quality healthcare services (p. 191). It shows that despite the growing concerns of job cuts among Singapore health care employees, leadership style of the managers has played pivotal role in making employees more productive and high performers. There are large number of factors that influence the job satisfaction of employees. among these factors are salary, fringe benefit, degree of professionalism, motivation, incentives, achievement, appreciations, communication, co-workers, working conduction, job-status, interpersonal relationship, managers’ support, leaders’ behaviour etc. Employees often feel dissatisfied when they work with unskilled or un-trained works, labors’ work like documentation, role ambiguity, over load, etc. Among the factors that positively influence job satisfaction, leadership is perceived as an important element that plays vital role in job satisfaction, performance and productivity (Rad, 2006, p. 11). The ultimate success of any organizational or managerial strategy that has been implemented with an objective to achieve sustainable competitive advantage, or make quality in services, or create high-performance working environment depends solely on managers and leaders. If there is effective leadership and management, the strategies can find pathway to the success. When managers are able to use appropriate leadership styles, they can certainly influence the level of job satisfaction. Leadership style is the managerial attitudes, behaviour and skills based on their values and the ability to influence the subordinates to work them in a highest possible capacity (Rad, 2006, p. 12). No matter whether the leader is charismatic, transformational, participative or transactional, it essentially requires to assemble certain characters that can positively influence the level of job-satisfaction, performance and employee commitment and negatively impact the turnover intention. Out of various styles of leadership like autocratic, bureaucratic, charismatic, participative etc, not every one agrees that a particular style may result in an effective form organizational behaviour, but rather, different styles may be needed for different situations and therefore each leader is required to know which particular approach will be better suited for certain situations (Rad, 2006, 13). Though various styles can be appropriate for various situations, transformational leadership seems to be more effective to promote employees’ commitments and enhance job-satisfaction. Transformational Leadership: Positively impacting job-satisfaction and negatively impacting turnover intention There can be many reasons to promote employee commitments and enhance their satisfaction. Better leadership style is an important that has been found to promote employee commitments. Out of various leadership styles detailed above, transformational leadership style seems to be a much better method of leading employees as it promotes employee commitments, improve their satisfaction with job and help them remain long term in the organization. Based on a study conducted among schools in Singapore, Bass (1998) outlined that transformational leadership is an ideal leadership style that endorses employee commitments and thereby their satisfaction (p. 19). The study from 89 secondary school in Singapore has concluded that employee commitment (teachers’ commitment) and their satisfaction with jobs were extensively greater when their leaders (principals) were transformational. As Bass (1998) emphasized, turn over intention, job satisfaction and pro-social behaviour depend greatly on commitment. Employees who are committed will be relatively more satisfied with their jobs, less-intended to quit the job and are therefore likely to remain long in the organization. The above study has clearly showed that leadership style has a more direct impact on job satisfaction and in particular transformational leadership is more likely to be an effective leadership style that has more direct impact on job satisfaction. Woodside (2008) stressed that leaders with high construction and high consideration were found to outperform the leaders of other types with respect to promoting and enhancing job satisfaction of employees and their work performance as well. leaders with high construction and low consideration are found to be worst in relation to creating an environment where employees are satisfied (p. 308). Woodside (2008) emphasized, based on Han’s (1999) study that leadership efficiency showed significant level of correlation to job satisfaction (p. 308). When leaders influence subordinates in a very positive manner, especially through an effective leadership style, it certainly positively impacts employees’ behaviour and attitudes towards job, satisfaction, commitment etc. Most literatures stress that transformational leadership style is more effective in improving job satisfaction of the employees. Transformational leadership is more closely related to team-members health and well-being (Marshall and Coughlin, 2010, p. 214) which in turn positively affect job-satisfaction as well. a study conducted in Denmark has proved that the perception of health-care employees about their leader as transformational helped them have job satisfaction and psychological well-being. A similar study conducted in Kuwait concluded the same. Most of such studies linked transformational leadership style to job satisfaction of employees. A study conducted among healthcare leaders and staffs in United States showed that transformational leadership positively related to a consistent organizational culture and negatively impact turnover intention (Marshall and Coughlin, 2010, p. 214). Transformational leadership influences organizational commitment. Organizational commitment has basically three major components, they are: a) a strong belief in the goals and values of the organization, b) willingness to put efforts on behalf of the organization and c) a strong desire to keep organizational membership (Ngunia, Sleegersb and Denessen, 2006, p. 150). Employees with organizational commitments are found to have value commitment and commitment to stay with the organization. Leaders with transformational leadership style are found to give their followers a sense of competence, cooperation, confidence, control and direction and therefore employees feel themselves fit for the tasks being assigned to them they feel happy working with same leaders and this motivates them to remain back in the organization. Whenever employees feel that they are part of some effective and valuable activities. They feel that they have a good leader who helps them do their parts as well. Leaders with transformational leadership quality have influencing power that can change and transform employees, organizations and communities and it is therefore positively related to employees, groups and organizational performance (Lussier and Achua, 2009, p. 348). Transformational leadership involves a quality that influence the followers to strongly focus on groups interests rather than personal interests and because of that they often use their charisma and influencing power, they are able to motivate others to follow them as examples too. Personality characteristics between leadership style and job satisfaction level Yousef (2000) argued that organizational commitment plays mediating role in the relationships of leadership behaviour with the work outcomes of job satisfaction and job performance (p. 6). As detailed earlier, organizational commitments and job satisfaction are two inter-related elements that can be influenced by leadership or management styles. When it comes to factors like job satisfaction, performance, absenteeism and turn over intention, organizational commitment can be seen as having greater impact on these factors. An employees becomes satisfied of his job when he has organizational commitments. He feels commitments only when he receives positive work environment or when he finds some thing that in turn makes him happy with works. Leadership style, especially, transformational is thus an important factor that impacts his commitments and thereby his job-satisfaction as well. How leadership style, in particular transformational leadership, affects personality characteristics and influences the level of job satisfaction. Effective leadership must involve the ability of leader to make followers become less interested in themselves and more interested in the group’s common activities and objectives (Griffith, 2004, p. 334). Transformational leaders are required to develop and build the commitments of group members and appeal them to broad moral and psychological needs. When transformational leaders are able to appeal senses of goodness, responsibility, individual obligations and so on, their leadership style will automatically influence the level of job satisfaction of the employees. Griffith (2004) argued that transformational leaders are to alter the behaviour and attitudes of employees (subordinates) mainly through three ways. They would provide a clear sense of mission by conveying and developing a sense of loyalty and commitment, with his ability of charisma or inspiration. Transformational leader would stimulate and create a learning environment as he considers each one on the basis of individualized treatment. He also provides opportunities to group members to examine new ways with his intellectual stimulation ability. Most literatures have emphasized that out of various leadership styles, transformational leadership is more likely to influence job satisfaction. It positively impacts on job satisfaction and organizational commitments and negatively impacts on turnover intention, absenteeism and job-stress. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This chapter provides a detailed description about the methodology used by the researcher to identify which leadership style is best for the job satisfaction of employees and how a particular leadership impacts on organizational commitment and job satisfaction. This chapter clearly defines the ways and guidelines that enable the research to be supported with the hypothesis being developed. Explanatory research This research paper uses explanatory research which is more applicable when the research issue is known, but a detailed study on it is further required. It is widely known that job satisfaction, employee commitment, organizational culture, turn over intention and so on can be largely influenced by management and leadership styles. A number of researchers have already developed studies and literatures about the relevance of transformational leadership and its influence on promoting job satisfaction. By using explanatory research, this research paper develops that transformational leadership is the most successful leadership style in relation to job satisfaction and organizational commitments. Research Process The main issue being discussed in the research is how leadership style influences employees job satisfaction. The main two variables are job satisfaction and leadership style. To find answers to the questions, the researcher has used a three steps explanatory research, they are observation, data gathering and analysis, and developing of the hypothesis. Observation Various leadership styles and its correlation to job satisfaction are carefully studied. How can organizational commitment and job satisfaction be positively impacted by a particular leadership and which particular leadership style is more likely to promote job satisfaction are observed. Data gathering and Analysis In the second stage, researcher depends mainly on secondary data. A number of literatures are reviewed and critically evaluated to come to a specific conclusion. Data has been gathered from different sources, including books, journals’ data base like EBSCO and Emerald. Google search engine has been of greater use to this research. Various search terms like leadership +styles+ job satisfaction + correlation of leadership and job satisfaction + transformational leadership + charismatic + transformational leadership influences job satisfaction + turnover intention + organizational commitments etc were fed in Google search engine. From these secondary research data, the basic problem issues have been analyzed based on the studies and literatures of different writers and experts. Developing Hypothesis By reviewing literatures and analyzing them, researcher attempts to find out possible answers to the research questions. The logical relation between main variables, leadership style and job satisfaction, are considered to come to the conclusion about how transformational leadership can positively influence job satisfaction. MAJOR FINDINGS This part of the research paper attempts to list out main findings of the paper, based on the analysis of secondary data. How leadership styles and job satisfaction are correlated, which leadership style is more effective to positively influence job satisfaction, and why a specific style seems to influence it more likely than others are listed in this part of research paper. Leadership styles and job satisfaction correlated Out of a large number of factors affecting job satisfaction, such as good working environment, pay, incentives, motivation, coworkers, etc, leadership and management are more important as they are from management’s behaviour. Leadership and management styles positively or negatively impact on various factors of employees at workplace like their commitment, job satisfaction, turn over intention etc. A leadership style is more likely to foster employee commitment and bring job satisfaction when it is comprised of certain qualities like cooperation, consideration, caring etc. There are different styles of leaderships, such as transformational, charismatic, participatory, quiet leader etc. All such different styles may influence organizational commitment and job satisfaction differently, at different levels. For example, charismatic may influence more than few other styles. This correlation can be varying according to situations as well. Transformational leadership and its impact on job satisfaction Most of researches have suggested that transformational leadership is best to influence employees in relation to their commitment and work satisfaction. Transformational leadership influence employees more than any other leadership style does. It touches minds and hearts of employees and therefore it has more greater positive impacts on job satisfaction. It is more closely related to subordinates’ health and well being as well. Transformational leadership comprises of high consideration as well as high construction and this has been found to influence job satisfaction and employee commitments. Transformational leadership more closely influences personality characteristics because subordinates get a feeling with sense of happiness, confidence, responsibility, awareness etc that help them get satisfied with jobs. Transformational leadership influences job satisfaction positively and turnover intention negatively through three ways, a) Charisma, b) individualized consideration and c) intellectual simulation. Organizational commitments is more directly related to job satisfaction. Transformational leadership enhances commitments which in turn promotes job satisfaction. CONCLUSION This piece of research paper has outlined underlying concepts of leadership, its styles, job satisfaction and turnover intention. The major issues being discussed relate to the correlation between leadership styles and job satisfaction. Out of various leadership styles that influence organizational commitment and job satisfaction differently, and varying in different situations, this paper has stressed that transformational leadership but has been found to be more effective style in influencing the job satisfaction of followers, regardless of situations. This research paper has highlighted that transformational leaders influence at the hearts of subordinates, through sense of cooperation, confidence, group works etc. Transformational leaders can make their employees more committed towards group works and become high;y satisfied with their jobs. Recommendation for further study Some researchers and literatures have pointed that all different styles of leadership influence job satisfaction differently according to the situations. But, these different situations are yet to be explored. This paper recommends that further study required to find how different leadership styles like charismatic, transformational, participative and transactional are influencing organizational commitment and job satisfaction differently at different situations. What are such situations and why these leadership styles influence differently in those different situations? This research paper suggests that these areas are to be further studied and explored. 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