The impact of transformational and transactional leadership styles on selected job attitudes in a steel manufacturing organisation

Abstract

Leadership in the workplace can be viewed as a social influence process in which a manager/supervisor seeks voluntary participation of subordinates in an effort to achieve the company’s objectives. Leadership styles applied by management play a significant role in improving or retarding the motivation of employees in the organisation. The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of transformational and transactional leadership styles on selected job attitudes in a steel manufacturing organisation. The job attitudes considered for the study were the job satisfaction, work engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour of employees. A questionnaire with a four-point Likert scale was used to collect data on transformational and transactional leadership styles and employees’ job satisfaction, work engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour from 136 participants working in a selected steel manufacturing organisation. The results showed that both transformational and transactional leadership styles are adopted by managers in the steel manufacturing organisation. The results also indicated that there is a strong positive relationship between the leadership styles, transformational and transactional, and job satisfaction among employees in a targeted steel manufacturing company. The results, however, indicated a very weak relationship between the leadership styles and other two job attitudes, work engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour. The research results are very important for the higher management of the targeted steel manufacturing organisation to increase employees’ job satisfaction, work engagement and organisational citizenship behaviour. This study comes to an end with recommendations, limitations and a brief conclusion.