LEADERSHIP STYLES AND EMPLOYEE'S WELL BEING

Leadership styles and Employee's Well being

Impact Of Different Leadership Styles on Empolyee's Well being

Introduction

The influence of leadership style on job performance, satisfaction, stress, and turnover intention has been well established. While leadership style has an impact on organizations, departments, and teams, as well as work climate and atmosphere, leaders who want the best results should not rely on a single leadership style (Goleman, 2000), However, there has been no research that has directly looked at the relationship between Situational Leadership Theory (SLT) and these variables. An exploration of these and other variables is important given both the popularity of the SLT and the lack of strong and consistent research support for the theory.

The relationship between leadership style and subordinate job satisfaction in different organizations has been studied extensively. For example, Vries et al. (1998) found a human-oriented leadership style increases job satisfaction and several studies have demonstrated that participative decision making can be beneficial to workers' mental health and job satisfaction (Spector, 1986; Miller and Monge, 1986; Fisher, 1989), Packard and Kauppi (1999) also found that different leadership styles relate to different levels of job satisfaction and that when leaders demonstrated high levels of consideration and supportive behavior, their subordinates tended to have higher level of job satisfaction.

Many studies have found leadership styles involved in relationship-oriented behavior have a positive relationship with satisfaction and performance (e.g. Wilkinson and Wagner, 1993), Researchers assume that leadership behaviors affect outcomes, such as group performance and goal attainment, by influencing the behaviors of subordinates (Vroom and Jago, 1988), Also leaders sometimes have a strong influence on employee and organizational outcomes (Vries et al., 1998), Avery and Ryan (2002) pointed out that although SLT has emphasized the relationship between leadership and job performance, little research has been undertaken in this area. However, little research has been devoted to the relationship between SLT and these variables although Montgomery et al. (1996) have suggested that such relationships may exist.

Numerous factors influence employee job satisfaction, including: salaries, fringe benefits, achievement, autonomy, recognition, communication, working conditions, job importance, co workers, degree of professionalism, organizational climate, interpersonal relationships, working for a reputable agency, supervisory support, positive affectivity, job security, workplace flexibility, working within a team environment and genetic factors. Sources of low satisfaction are associated with working with unskilled or inappropriately trained staff, laborious tasks such as documentation, repetition of duties, tensions within role expectations, role ambiguity, role conflict, job/patient care, feeling overloaded, the increasing need to be available for overtime, relations with co-workers, personal factors and organizational factors (Navaie-Waliser et al., 2004; Koustelios et al., 2003; De Loach, 2003; Ilies and Judg, 2003; Gigantesco et al., 2003; Blegen, 1993; Chu et al., 2003; McNeese-Smith, 1999; Thyer, 2003).

Irvine and Evans (1995) have also underlined the importance of work characteristics (routine, autonomy and feedback), characteristics of how the work role is defined (role conflict and role ambiguity) and characteristics of the work environment (leadership, stress, advancement opportunities and participation) in relation to job ...