Leadership styles in influencing employees’ job performances

Abstract

As the global business environment becomes increasingly competitive, the manager’s leadership style is gaining importance to drive employees’ efficiencies and productivity levels. Employees are the key drivers of the organization. Managers are expected to demonstrate strong leadership that can boost employees’ performances and direct followers to achieve organization goals. This study was conducted to discover the relationship between leadership styles and employees’ job performances. Specifically, this paper aims to identify the degree of influence among the three types of leadership styles namely, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and thought leadership on employees’ job performances in the Malaysian private sector. Researchers have conducted many studies on transformational and transactional leadership theories adopted from Full Range Leadership Model developed by (Bass & Avolio, 1994). However, thought leadership role has started to draw much attention on how leadership styles affect employees’ job performances. This article also aims to provide an alternative view that distinguishes from previous researches which focus on different leadership styles used by managers to improve employees’ job performances in different settings. A conceptual framework has been developed to examine the impact of the three types of leadership styles on employees’ job performances.