Leadership Styles Dilemma, Employees Performance and Moderation Effect of Leader's Self-Efficacy and Stages of Organizational Life Cycle

Abstract

The empirical studies of the leadership styles have been zooming in to very minute details without any theoretical integration. This research is an effort to present an integrated model of leadership effectiveness and then correlating integrated leadership styles and the employees’ performance. On the moderation side, this study included comparatively newer phenomenon of impact of stages of Organizational Life Cycle (OLC) and leader’s self-efficacy on this relationship. Being exploratory study, it used factor analysis technique for dimensions reduction and identified four basic leadership styles (LS-1, LS-2, LS-3, and LS-4). The main constituent of LS-1 Style is transformational, LS-2 is telling, LS-3 is consultative and LS-4 is pace setting style. These leadership styles could epitomize most of the styles of leadership, available in the relevant literature. LS-1 and LS-3 styles have highly positive correlation with employees’ performance whereas LS-2 and LS-4 leadership styles do not impact employees’ performance. On the moderation side the results show that the LS-1 and LS-2 style leaders will be more successful during later stages of the OLC whereas LS-3 style leaders will prove to be successful during early stages of the OLC. OLC stage will not impact the relationship between LS-4 leadership style and the performance of his employees. Self-efficacy of LS-1 and LS-2 style leaders will have significantly positive impact on the relationship between leadership style and performance of their employees. However, in case of LS-3, it will impact negatively the relationship between leadership style and performance of their employees. Self-efficacy of LS-4 style leaders will not impact the relationship between leadership style and the performance of his employees. The experimental study of this thesis suggested a simpler motivational tool to be used by the leaders for effective performance of their employees. In the light of Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory and Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory, the results show that increasing belief in the system of divine accountability has significant positive impact on the employee’s performance, which is not moderated by education level, age and gender. The concept of integrated leadership styles will make it simple to understand and handier to practice leadership styles theories. The findings of this research may provide guidelines to improve organizational performance by using the most suitable leadership style at different stages of OLC as per the leader’s self-efficacy. The findings can help organizations to fine-tune the contents of business leaders training packages to get required outcomes of these trainings. The integrated leadership styles will help organizations in hiring of new leadership and in setting priorities of leadership development. The researcher hopes that the motivational tool suggested will be helpful to the organizational leaders in improving performance of their employees in general and in the organizations where very less or no supervision is possible, in particular.