PARTICIPATIVE LEADERSHIP STYLE AND ITS EFFECT ON ORGANIATIONAL PERFORMANCE 

CHAPTER ONE

1.0     Introduction

Leadership is a complex research area across all sectors be it private or public. There is ambiguity over which styles and behaviors are the most effective for organizational performance. There are difficulties in linking LG Finances leadership styles with organisational performance since LG Finance’s performance measures are affected by multiple confounding factors. This research however, aims to see whether there is a link between leadership styles and LG Finance’s performance.

For the past five years LG Finances has been experiencing a decrease in output due to factors such as poor employee performance, poor motivational strategies, reduced staff morale, and unavailability of resources. It was assumed that the decreased output might be as a result of the leadership styles being used by LG Finances. Given such a background, researcher saw it possible to carry out a research to see whether there is a link between leadership styles and organizational performance.

In a bid to improve performance, managers at LG Finances employed a combined and coordinated system of managing human resource and their performance to accomplish the goals of the organisations. However, this seemed not to have changed anything as it was observed by the researcher that the organization was experiencing slow growth rate due to rapid staff turnover. Performance management approach was adopted in order to monitor employees' performance in line with the goals of the organization.

Performance Standards were measured in terms of efficiency and effectiveness based on discipline, punctuality, quality of work, quantity of work and time taken to accomplish a task. It was also measured by the number of complaints from Customers, compliments from the Customers, time taken to attend to Customers by employees.

According to Lawal,A.A.(1993) Leadership is the process of influencing others to work willingly toward an organizational goal with confidence. “leadership is generally defined simply as the process of influencing people to direct their efforts towards achievement of some particular goal or goals”. According to Koontz, et,al (1985), “Leadership is generally defined simply as the art of influencing people so that they will strive willingly towards the achievement of group goals”. This concept can be enlarging to include not only willingness to work but with zeal and confidence.

Nwachukwu,C.C.(2000), sees “Leadership simply as an act that involves influencing others to act toward the attainment of a goal”.Ubeku,A.A.(1975)define leadership as the act of motivating or causing people to perform certain task intended to achieve specified objectives. Leadership is the act of making things happen rather than letting things happen. This the leader does by exerting both intrinsic and extrinsic influences on the group. Even though leadership is the most visible of’ the management functions. Largely because it deals so much with people. It has variedly been referred to as directly, commanding, guiding, Inspiring, initiating, and activating. However, all stand for the same purpose whatever denotation used. The user, as the striking feature of all suggest a relationship through which one person influences the behaviour of other people.

Sikula,A.F.(1996).Leadership has different meanings to various authors. Some have interpreted leaders in simple term such as the influence, the art or process of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and enthusiastically towards achievement of group goals (Koontz,et,al (1978).

The emphasis of this definition is that ideally, people should be encouraged to develop not only willingness to Work but also willingness to work with zeal and confidence.Leadership has also been interpreted more specifically as the use of authority in decision making exercised as an attribute of position, personal knowledge or wisdom .Ejiofor,P.(1989) defined leadership as a social influence process in which the leader seeks voluntary participation of subordinates in an effort to reach organizational objectives. Similarly, Tennenbaun et,al (I968) defined leadership as interpersonal influence exercised in situations and directed through the communication, towards the attainment of’ a specific goal(s). Adebakin and Gbadamosi (1996) defined leadership as the process of influencing and directing the activities of an organized group towards the achievement of the group of organization set objectives.The foregoing Lions show leadership been based on function of’ personality, behavioural category, the role of’ a leader and their ability to achieve effective performance from others, the interpersonal behaviour and the process of’ communications.

Despite these variations, there are at least three important implications of’ these definitions. Firstly, leadership is a process engaged in by certain individual (leaders). It is an on—going activity in an organization.

Secondly, it involves other people in form of subordinates who by their willingness are influenced by the leader.

Therefore, the subordinates formalize the leader’s authority by making leadership process possible. Thirdly, the aim of’ leadership is accomplishment of goal and objectives, a pointer that the leaders attempt at influencing the subordinate are directional and therefore aim at level of achievement.

1.1 Background of the Study.

Participative leadership is defined as the process of making joint decisions or at least sharing influence in decision making by the superior and his or her subordinates (Somech, 2005). It is not relatively a new concept because it has a rich and varied history. It began to flourish in the 1980s in the guise of management policy initiatives inspired by the new excellence movement and rise of human resources management (Beardwell and Holden, 1997). It has many potential benefits. It is likely to increase the quality of the decisions (Scully et al., 1995); to contribute to the quality of employees’ work lives (Somech, 2002); to promote employees’ motivation to work (Armenakis et al., 1993; Locke and Lutham, 1990; Yammarino and Naughton, 1992) and to increase employee satisfaction and organisational commitment (Smylie, Lazarus and Brownlee-Congers, 1996).

Moreover, in team situations, using a participative leadership style is important because it leads to high levels of team outcomes (Sagie et al., 2002), and solicits different ideas from team members (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993). These scholars reflect a widely shared notion that participative leadership has a great utility in organisational and team effectiveness. It values the employee more than it does to the job, and such leadership behaviour is likely to engender increased organisational commitment among employees (Bass, 1981). The work attitudes of male workers favours a directive way of leading with the focus on performance whilst that of female workers on the other hand, favours a participative way of leading with the focus on sub-ordinate’s commitment (Werner et al., 2007). These different attitudes toward work are the characteristic of gender (Heilman et al., 1995). The understanding of gender as an important feature of work behaviour has become increasingly important in African organisations than ever before (Ijeoma, 2010). With the advent of women in organizations, the study of organisational behaviour has extended to encompass the male and female work behaviour (Deal and Stevenson, 1998). However, there are relatively few written significant variations between men and women (Kunkel and Burleson, 1999).

Leadership is an important area in management that occupies of central position in our every day life.  It involves the still of leading and dealing with people.  One thing among human group is that there is always a leader otherwise the group cannot live to achieve its purpose.

The success in leading a group is contingent upon both leaders ability to held power effectively and the existence of an opportunistic situation.  The problems which result within organizational members disagree on both the nature of the goals of which people aspire, and the art of leadership.  Leadership as we use to term in this work refers to behaviour undertaken within the context of an organization that influence the ways in which other organizational members behave.  It could be observed that leadership and management envisages deeply into what the organization can achieve if the quality of recognition is accorded to them.  Leadership has been propounded to include the source of influence that are built into position in an organizational hierarchy.  These include organizational sanctioned rewards and punishment authority and also export power.  It could be seen however that subordinates within the organization, though not all seen to enjoy the influence that exist all over the above organizational hierarchy provided by them in the organization.

Leadership is very essential in organization because achievements and results occur vis-à-vis the tracts being projected by leader.  Leadership includes the ultimate source of power but has the positive ability in persuading other individual and to be innovative in decision making.  Problems are sound to occur within every noted organization.  Decision making is found to generate conflicts in whatever they are doing to achieve organizational goal.  In the light, the notions of leadership act are these which help a given organization in meeting those stated objectives (Barelas 1960).

In general terms, the act of controlling other people consist of uncertainty reduction which entails making the kind choice that permits the organization to proceed towards its objectives despite various kind of internal and external challenges.

Note:  That in the society today, not only the presence of reward (positive and negative) or the incentive appraisal could induce productivity but the feeling of belongingness.  Further expressions like, is it my father’s work?  “They can dismiss me, I don’t care”, “why should I kill myself for them”?  There are some of the uncountable expressions often used by Nigeria workers to show that attitude to work.  Whenever any of these expression are heard, one will readily know that something is wrong somewhere in the entire system, so meaningful economics development, growth and self reliance would not be obtained where unsuitable leadership style is in place, therefore, how far an organization succeeds in achieving its goals depends to a large extent on how the management and workers relationship are handled in the organization, and this effect workers psychological expectation.  In the light of the foregoing, this study aim is to look at the leadership style, the organization should adopt to attain better performance.  The work will also try to examine the philosophy of leadership and its functional relationship with workers performance in a manufacturing firm.  Therefore, to discover more means of finding a lasting solution to the numerous problems facing leadership styles on workers performance.  The increasing force of competition have awakened the minds of organizational management to develop and acquire new technique and mechanism to increase the level of organizational efficiency and effectiveness.  This task requires resources of the organization involved in production namely – money, material and labour which need to be confirmed appropriately for effective performance.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Leadership style has become a very crucial area of management.  In fact, it has attracted the attention of many management scientists who have actually delved into the difficult task of writing about the subject in the management literature.

Improper leadership qualities within the organization have a negative impact on the subordinates as well as the achievement of the organization objectives.

For a long time, due to many factors, including the ‘hegemonic’ nature of communication in Nigeria, youths had little opportunity to be active in governance, or make their views heard. However, with improvement in communication technology, the status quo appears to be changed.

An effective leader influences followers in a desired manner to achieve desired goals. Different leadership styles may affect organizational effectiveness or performance.

Transformational leadership is a stronger predictor of both job satisfaction and overall satisfaction. In the study it was concluded that organizational performance is influenced by a competitive and innovative culture. Organizational Culture is influenced by leadership style and consequently, leadership style affects organizational performance.  So this research work is set to find its effects on the organizational performance.

1.3 Objective of the Study

The main focal point and idea of this research work is centered on the research topic itself which is on participative leadership style and its effect on organizational performance. Other objective the research will cover in this work are:

i.                   To ascertain the conflicts and challenges on participative leadership style within the organization.

ii.                 To investigate the core reasons why the organization performance is positive or negative.

iii.              To highlight the benefits of participative leadership style on the performance off an organization.

iv.              To access how zenith bank Wukari has been managing its organization in terms of its performance, do the participative leadership style have any effect or not to their performance.

v.                 To critically evaluate the nature of leadership styles as it affects workers performance in Zenith Bank Wukari, Taraba State.

1.4 Research questions

The research work is guided with same research question, which will be administered and distributed among the researchers area of study which are the respondents to this research project and these comprise followers and management and leaders of Zenith Bank Wukari. Sample research question are:

1.     Is there any conflicts in the participative leadership style in management Zenith Bank Wukari?

2.     Is there any significant relationship between high organizational performance and participative leadership style in Wukari Zenith bank branch?

3.     What method of leadership style would you prefer over the participative leadership style in improving the organizational performance?

4.     Is there any effective and efficient leadership styles existing in Zenith Bank Wukari?

1.5 Research hypotheses.

The researcher formed some of the hypothesis which will be tested to support this study. The hypothesis will be tested at 0.05 level of significance using the chi-square method and correlation analysis of the SPSS report sheet.

The research hypothesis are as follows.

Hypothesis 1: there is a significance relationship in participative leadership style and the organizational performance of Zenith Bank Wukari.

Hypothesis 2: There is significant correlation on participative leadership style and the followers on performance improvement.

1.6 Scope of the Study.

This research work will cover the two Zenith bank located at Wukari LGA of Taraba State for the course of this research and this study is on participative leadership style and its effect on organizational performance.

1.7 limitations of the Study

A lot of militating constraints were encountered during the course of this write up. They are:-

Inaccessibility to some documents, which arose due to security, imposed on some of the organization documents by the management. It was not also possible to make an in-dept study of these documents, which would have helped in the development of the project work.

Time was a major limitation to this write up, there wasn’t enough time to study the details of the various field of the information department of the organization unavailability of textbook needed for this write – up was not found in the institution library.

1.8 Significance of the Study.

This research work will present in a precise manner, the importance of participative leadership style and its effect on organizational performance.It is believed that the findings of this research work should provide detailed information on the effects of participative leadership stylemethods in obtaining a high organizational performance. It is also expected that the study will benefit the leaders and also the followers, researchers and the organization in general.

The findings of the study should be useful to the management of the organization. It is expected that the findings will expose theleaders to the importance of participative leadership style to organization performance. By this exposure the management and the leaders they could acknowledge the advantage participative leadership style over other style of leadership. It is possible that by this outcome the leaders and the management would realistically adjust to the application of participative leadership style in achieving greater and high performance in organization. In turn, the followers would have real focus for better performance and achievements in their duties.

Subsequently, it will go a long way to enhance the business administration students’ effectiveness in the society by being capable of carrying out what they have learned, thereby contributing to the building up of the organization at any level and where they find themselves.

The research will also be beneficial to the researcher. This is because the study will expose the researcher to so many related areas in the course of carrying out his research. This will enhance the researcher’s experience, knowledge and understanding on participative leadership style.

1.9 Operational Definitions of Terms

Leadership: The process of directing and inspiring employee to perform task and oriented activities of the organization.

Style: The various behavior patterns favoured by leaders during the process of directing and influencing employee.

Productivity: The act of carrying out an action or a piece of work.

Motivation: The force that influence, enthusian, direct employee energy towards the attainment of set objectives.

Autocratic: One who rules by his own power without seeking the opinion of his subordinate.

Democratic: One who adheres to, or promote individual participation as a principle.

Laissez faire: A leader general principle of no interference with the free action of his subordinate.

Organization: Are artificially contrived structures with procedures and objectives defining the responsibilities and highlighting who does what type of job task.

Reward: Feeling of satisfaction derived from achieving recognition and competence.