The influence of leadership style on employee engagement in a manufacturing company in the Northwest Province of South Africa

Abstract

For organisations to sustain a competitive advantage in the 21st century, organisational change is inevitable. Managers and supervisors (leaders), who are the change agents in organisations, have a significant role to play in the change process in keeping employees engaged. Johnson (2015:70) concludes that higher levels of engagement will be achieved when a leader focuses on the employee's needs and rewards them for good performance. The organisation, which was central to this study is situated in the North-West Province, South Africa. The organisation is currently undergoing managerial change which was brought on by the challenging task of identifying suitable leadership that could fulfil the role of the retiring owner who was perceived as a transformational leader. Hence, the study aimed to investigate the influence of transformational leadership on employee engagement as opposed to the influence of transactional leadership on employee engagement. This study employed a quantitative research approach with a cross-sectional design. To explore the relationship between leadership style and employee engagement, data was collected in response to a survey. During the time of the study the organisation was involved in two resource-intensive projects; the target group was therefore working under extreme pressure to meet aggressive project deadlines. The target group consisted of individuals employed by the company for at least six months. The target population (N=43) consisted of managers and supervisors, as well as semi-skilled employees that could influence the performance and efficiency of the organisation through their level of engagement. The study results indicate that the organisation employs predominately more transformational leaders than transactional leaders and that employees are fairly engaged. Furthermore, leadership style and employee engagement have been found to be significantly positively related, indicating that both the transformational and transactional leadership styles are able to influence the level of engagement of followers. Transactional leadership was found to be associated more strongly to employee engagement as compared to the association between transformational leadership and employee engagement. This is contradictory to the greater majority of the literature and could have been as a result of the strenuous circumstances prevailing in the company during the time of this study. It is recommended that the organisation should prioritise the development of its leaders to enhance employee engagement.