The Impact of Leadership styles and ethics in an organisation affect employee performance in the U.K.
- Research Proposal
Introduction
Leadership is one of the key factors that determine the performance of employees in an organisation (Chen et al., 2014; Xie et al., 2018). Similarly, several studies (Bouckenooghe, Zafar, and Raja, 2015; Huang and Paterson, 2017; Zhu et al., 2015) have shown that ethical behaviours within an organisation play a significant role in improving the performance or overall productivity of employees. The role of ethics and leadership in impacting the performance of an organisation has attracted the attention of many investigators, making it a heavily researched area (Dhar, 2016). However, only a few investigations have been conducted to define what an ethical environment should be and how this would impact the performance of employees. Therefore, the primary aim of the current study is to explore the impact of leadership styles and ethics on the performance of employees in UK firms.
Aims
The primary aim of this investigation is to explore the impact of leadership styles and ethics on employee performance in UK firms.
Objectives
The following five specific objectives will guide this study:
- To investigate the role of corporate ethical values on the performance of employees in UK firms.
- To explore the impact of ethical leadership on the performance of employees in UK organisations.
- To investigate the effect of Laissez-Faire style of leadership on the performance of employees in UK organisations.
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- To investigate the effect of the autocratic style of leadership on the performance of employees in UK firms.
- To explore the effect of democratic leadership style on the performance of employees in UK organisations.
Research questions
This study will be aimed at answering the following three research questions:
- How do corporate ethical values affect the quality of leadership of an organisation?
- Does ethical leadership play a significant role in determining the performance of employees in an organisation?
- What is the impact of differences in leadership styles on the performance of employees in an organisation?
Significance of the study
This study will provide a valuable opportunity for identifying the role that leadership style has on the performance of firms. Besides, the study will help in explaining what good leadership entails, which, in turn, will benefit organizations in the UK in diverse ways including ensuring good organizational performance, increase in revenue, and overall organisational growth. Moreover, determining the best leadership style will have a positive impact on customer’s confidence in an organisation, as well as improved collaboration among different stakeholders in an organisation, which will lead to improved performance. Findings of the study will also be instrumental in helping managers to reflect and rethink their styles of leadership, and the impact it may be having on the performance of their organisations. Moreover, findings from this investigation will help organisations in formulating policies on leadership to impact employee and overall organisational performance. Besides impacting practice, this investigation is significant since it will be used a basis for other research work about the role of ethics and leadership styles on organisation performance.
Conceptual Framework
Figure 1 below summarizes the conceptual framework on which the current research will be based.
Figure 1: Conceptual framework
Literature Review
Various studies have been conducted about the role of leadership styles and the impact of corporate ethical values on the performance of firms. One of the areas that have been covered extensively is about what constitutes ethical leadership. As Freeman (2016) indicates, one of the aspects that different stakeholders look for in leadership is that of “ethical leadership,” or good leadership. Consequently, organizations need to put a lot of emphasis on creating and sustaining ethical leadership. An organization can only achieve high quality leadership if those appointed to serve in such positions express high levels of ethical behaviours. Demirtas (2015) shows that effective leadership should be scoped beyond diagnostic abilities, awareness of assumptions, and skills. Moreover, as per Aristotle’s perspective, leadership entails the capacity of followers to deal with different situations productively and ethically based on insight vision, sensitivity, experience, expertise, skills, and knowledge. Also, Letwin et al. (2016) reiterate the argument that leadership is not just about the ability to impact decision-making processes. Ethical leadership requires that leaders should have possessed certain values, ethical norms, and supporting norms.
Ladkin (2008) gives three elements constitute skilful leadership as having rationality, consistency, and visionary. Therefore, for one to impact the performance of an organization through leadership, they need to be rational in striving to achieve change, as well as be consistent and rational in the actions they take. Bavik et al. (2018) also reiterate that ethical leadership should focus on meeting the needs of other people in an organisation in a manner that improves the overall performance of the organization. It is for this reason that Fehr, Yam, and Dang (2015) believe that ethical leadership is divergent from the typical leadership styles such as authentic, servant, transformational, and transactional. Each of the different styles of leadership has unique strengths and weaknesses based on the characteristics or features. However, as Fehr, Yam, and Dang (2015) indicate, the emphasis on moral impression, moral management, and moral perception is the main distinguishing feature of moral leadership.
Leadership styles and the impact they have on employee performance is a heavily researched area. Moreover, studies have explored the impact of the different styles of leadership on employee performance. In one of the studies, Wong and Giessner (2018) indicate that the impact of a manager in any organisation is contingent on leadership styles and other situational factors. Yang (2015) cites that most contingency theories espouse that adopting a Laissez-faire style of leadership, which gives a lot of emphasis on empirical freedom impacts the performance of employees significantly. Yang (2015) also highlights that several researchers have provided reliable and valid findings about the effectiveness of Laissez-faire style of leadership on impacting the performance of employees in an organisation. Also, Kumar (2015) agrees that employing Laissez-faire leadership gives junior employees optimum freedom, which, in turn, result in improved productivity and employee performance.
There are a lot of similarities between Laissez-Faire leadership and transformational leadership. However, in the latter, the leader has a primary role of effecting the desired change by being visionary (Hoch et al., 2018). As Banks et al. (2016) indicate, transformational leadership can be described by several behaviours such as individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, idealized influence, and attributed charisma. Various researchers, such Jerobon (2016) have shown that transformational leadership has a positive impact on the performance of employees since it focusses on developing their potential and knowledge. Atmojo (2015) also agrees that transformational leadership impacts the performance of employees positively by stating that this approach enables the employees to execute their duties autonomously, as well as based on their mindset to realize the desired goals. Eliyana and Ma’arif (2019) also espouse that a transformational leader motivates employees serving in junior positions to share the organizational goals, missions, and visions, which, in turn, encourages them to achieve maximum productivity and performance. Angka and Darma (2016) concur that the frequency with which transformational leadership can be implemented in an organization plays a crucial role in affecting the performance of an organization positively since it results in psychological empowerment of the junior staff. Consequently, from the literature reviewed, organisations that implement transformational leadership styles are likely to attain a greater competitive advantage than those which apply other styles of leadership. However, Gimuguni et al. (2014) give a contrary observation that transformational leadership may not necessarily improve the performance of employees.
Contrary to transformational and Laissez-Faire leadership, autocratic leadership does not give the employees freedom in doing their work. As De Hoogh, Greer, and Den Hartog (2015) indicate, key features of autocratic leadership include that the leader reserves the rights in making all decisions, as well as retains control, authority, and power. Secondly, autocratic leaders rarely delegate their powers or create the opportunity for empowering their subordinates De (Hoogh, Greer, and Den Hartog, 2015). Laub (2018) also adds some characteristics of autocratic leadership as one in which the leader takes all the full responsibility and credit; uses threats to get work done; and makes the assumption that what motivates employees is by executing a reward and punishment system, but not empowerment. Moreover, autocratic leadership is characterized by one-way communication and high levels of supervision (Chukwusa, 2018).
A significant number of studies that have been conducted about autocratic leadership have associated it with have a negative impact on employee performance. As Ullah, Kiran, and Liu (2019) indicate, one of the main reasons this style of leadership is associated with poor performance is that employees have little motivation and do not have shared vision. Similarly, Chua, Basti, and Hassan (2018) argue that most employees under this style of leadership do not support people in higher ranks, but will always anticipate their downfall. Poor communication, lack of participation of subordinate staff in decision-making, as well as lack of innovation, creativity, and commitment on the side of the employees results in reduced performance (Aravena, 2019). Nonetheless, Gaffney, Rast, and Hogg (2018) argue that although this style of leadership has been shown to reduce employee performance, it has a diverse range of advantages to an organization including improved productivity and quick decision-making process.
Based on the literature review above, several research gaps can be identified. Firstly, the available evidence about the impact of ethics and leadership style on the performance is highly varied. While most of the evidence (Angka and Darma, 2016; Atmojo, 2015; Eliyana and Ma’arif, 2019; Wong and Giessner, 2018; Yang, 2015) agree that transformational and Laissez-faire styles of leadership results in improved employee performance, other investigations (Gaffney, Rast, and Hogg, 2018) and theoretical model disagree. For instance, Theory X can support the autocratic leadership style, while Theory Y backs transformational and Laissez-Faire styles of leadership in improving the performance of employees. Other studies, including Gimuguni et al. (2014), have established a negative relationship between transformational or Laissez-Faire styles of leadership with employee performance. Consequently, there are inconsistent results observations about the impact of ethics and leadership styles on employee performance. Besides inconsistency, only a few investigations have addressed the questions about corporate ethical values, ethical leadership, and the performance of employees. Consequently, the current investigation will play a crucial role in bridging the literature gap, as well as providing valuable information concerning the inconsistencies in past investigations.
Methodology
The overall main objective of this study is to explore the impact on leadership styles and ethics on employee performance. The study will be based on the presupposition that a relationship exists between employee performance, type of leadership styles, and the corporate ethical values.
Research Philosophy
A positivist approach or will be used in this study. This research paradigm relies on systematic and scientific approaches in conducting an investigation (Punch and Oancea, 2014). The positivist paradigm is based on the perspective that the world can be explained using universal laws (Kelly, Dowling, and Millar, 2018). Consequently, in following the positivist approach in conducting this research, several key features of scientific research will be observed (Punch and Oancea, 2014): Firstly, special data will be observed and gathered. Secondly, patterns from the collected data will be drawn to develop theory. In the third step, hypotheses will be formed and tested to draw conclusions. A positivist research paradigm can take a confirmatory (deductive) or exploratory (inductive) approaches (Antwi and Hamza, 2015). In this study, a confirmatory approach will be adopted. In this approach, the focus will be placed on developing a prediction or hypothesis based on the existing theory. After that, the investigation will provide valuable data, which will be analysed to provide evidence that can support or reject the existing theory.
Research methodology
A quantitative research approach will be adopted in completing this study. Quantitative research approach focusses on measurements and numerical, mathematical, or statistical data that can be obtained from diverse sources, including surveys, questionnaires, and polls. Moreover, as is the case in the current research, manipulation of pre-existing data is another strategy that can be used in obtaining information for quantitative research. As Bryman (2017) indicate, the quantitative research methodology will focus on using numerical data obtained survey to determine the impact of different leadership styles, as well as ethical practices or values within an organisation on employee performance.
Research design
This research aims at investigating the relationship existing between leadership styles, corporate ethical values, and the performance of employees in an organisation. It is also presumed that the different variables have a significant association with each other, but the strength of the links varies significantly. Consequently, an exploratory research design shall be adopted, which will entail the use of both analytical and descriptive strategies. In this case, leadership styles and corporate ethical values will be treated as independent variables (IV). On the other hand, the performance of employees in different sectors will be treated as the dependent variables (DV). Key components are summarised under the conceptual framework and include moral sensitivity, rewards and punishment, moral perspective, balanced processing for corporal ethical values. In contrast, leadership styles include employee performance (EP), Laissez-Faire Leadership (LF), Authoritative leadership (AL), Transactional leadership (TL), and transformational leadership. On the contrary, the components of the DV are efficiency and effectiveness.
Study population and Sampling
The study will target employees working in different U.K companies. Organization apply different corporate ethical values and leadership styles. Therefore, by recruiting, participants from different organizations, the various components of the dependent and independent variables will be able to obtain. A simple random sampling technique will be used in selecting participants. As Emerson (2015) indicates, random sampling is a probabilistic sampling technique in which all the elements of the study population have equal chances of being selected. This sampling technique is selected because of its strengths which include that it is easy to use and provides an accurate means of presentation. The technique also yields a sample that is a clear representation of the entire population, eliminating the risks of sampling errors. Moreover, simple random sampling eliminates the risks of bias, which, in turn, increases the validity and reliability of the study findings.
Data Collection and Instruments
Questionnaires will be administered as the main instrument of data collection. The questionnaires will be administered personally to help in increasing the accuracy of the collected data. The use of questionnaires is selected as the main instrument for collecting data due to the fact that it will enable the researcher in obtaining frequencies, patterns, and other features that will lead to the description of the relationship between the IV and DV (Ponto, 2015). Questionnaires have several strengths, including that they can be analysed straightforwardly, they are quick to administer, and most respondents are familiar with them. In this study, a framework developed by Lawton and Peez (2015) about ethical leadership will be used as the basis for describing different components and variables about ethical leadership. Key variables of leadership ethics entail defining; (1) who ethical leaders are and what they do; (2) reasons for what they do; and (3) how they carry out their daily activities (Lawton and Paez, 2015, p. 640).
Analytical approach
This study will primarily rely on both descriptive statistic and inferential statistics as the method of data analysis. Descriptive statistics gives coefficients that can represent the sample or the entire population. Generally, descriptive statistics can be classified into measures of variability or measures of central tendency (Holcomb, 2016). In this study, both the measures of variability, including minimums and maximums, variance and standard deviation, as well as measures of central tendency, particularly the average, will be applied. SPSS Software will be used for the descriptive statistics analysis. Some of the key functionalities of SPSS Software that will be applied include visual basic applications, macro-programming languages, pivot tables, graphing tools, and calculations.
On the other hand, inferential statistics will primarily be applied in hypothesis testing or to help in generalizing results from the sample to the entire population. Specifically, regression and correlation analyses will be conducted to determine the type and strength of association existing between the DV and IV. Using correlation coefficients obtained, the stated null hypotheses will be accepted or rejected. Other than Pearson’s correlation test, the Chronbach’s alpha will be calculated to determine the levels of internal consistency among the variables (Bonett and Wright, 2015).
Ethical Considerations
Permission shall be sought from the different organisations before the questionnaire is administered. Moreover, the research will only be conducted after the ethical review board has approved it. Participants will also be required to sign an informed consent form, which will show their willingness to take part in the investigation voluntarily. Essentially, the informed consent shall indicate the purpose and role of the survey and the type of data to be collected and how it will be used. The researcher will also ensure that the confidentiality and privacy rights of the participants are safeguarded.
- Dissertation
A dissertation on how leadership styles and ethics in an organisation affect employee performance in the U.K.
- Literature review (4400 words)
- Methodology (3000 words)
- Results (1000 words)
- Analysis (1000 words)
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