Leadership Style's Impact On Employee Job Satisfaction: Decapolis Group Essay, Nigeria.

Students will write a dissertation research proposal outlining research aims, research design and methodology, consideration of ethical issues with completed ethics checklist and containing an indicative bibliography

You should email your dissertation topic to your tutor before submission. The best way to contact them is to email them directly, rather than using the forum, as it is quite personal to you.  Your tutor will give you advice on your topic.

The dissertation proposal is the plan for your final dissertation, which will be a 15,000 word dissertation, and is a substantial piece of work.

The current business scenario is changing due to social and economic instability. Hence, only those corporations could survive who are able to adapt in the fast-changing type of atmosphere. In addition, it is also found that when the leader starts to make a change in the working place then it could create a problem for management (Men and Stacks, 2013). Moreover, an effective environment could be generated by both good leadership and management. In an organization, leaders could face many challenges at the time of performing their task (Dumdum, Lowe and Avolio, 2013). It is stated that there are different types of leaders which has adversely impact on the level of employee satisfaction. These leaders are authentic, autocratic, charismatic, Laissez-Faire, Bureaucratic, Participative and Supportive leaders. 

There are certain leadership styles which could be used within an organization such as laissez-faire, transactional leadership, and transformational leadership style. The transformational and transactional leadership could be important to easily influence the employee and accomplish the specified goal in limited resources. There are several dissertations have written on the topic from 1990 to up till now. This study focuses on job satisfaction of employees and leadership style. Nigerian working culture is co-operative and focuses on making a good relationship with workforces in the company (Men and Stacks, 2013). A co-operative culture provides a way of interaction with other at the working place as it could lead employees to meet their specified aim and objectives of the organization. Through this, organization could mainly consider certain factors like family, relationship, and community. It could support to develop harmony and group consistency in the working place.

The Decapolis Group is established in 2002 in Nigeria. This organization is growing at the international level. It provides quality product and services to their specified consumers that support to make their distinguish image in the marketplace.              

It is a leading brand which deals in three business activities named Retail, Distribution and Services, and Advertising Promotional Products (Decapolis Group, 2017). Further, the mission of this company is to deliver superior products and services to their customers and aids the employees to meet their target in estimated budget and time. The vision of this organization is to provide comfort to their consumers in consuming the product and services. Decapolis has made a core of centralized infrastructure which is willingly existed to all business division to meet their growth plan and operations. The main logistics and distribution center of Decapolis exists in Lagos’s mainland Ilupeju Industrial Estate. It is 15 minutes far from International and domestic airports which have entailed more than 500 distribution vans.  

Aim and Objectives

The main aim of this report is to analyze the impact of leadership style on the employee’s job satisfaction: in context of Decapolis Group, Nigeria. The following objectives would be used to meet the main aim of this research:

• To explore the meaning and concept of leadership style and employee’s job satisfaction
• To identify the impact of leadership style on employees' job satisfaction: in context of Decapolis Group, Nigeria
• To recommend the strategies to improve the leadership style for enhancing the employees' job satisfaction: in context of Decapolis Group, Nigeria

Research rationale

This research is significant for a reader to create the knowledge about the meaning and concept of leadership style and job satisfaction. It is also beneficial for the company to increase their understanding with respect to the impact of leadership style on employee’s satisfaction. It is also advantageous for Decapolis Group to understand the strategies to improve their leadership style as could affect to enhance their growth.

According to Aydin Sarier and Uysal (2013), the leader is an individual who encourages people to meet their aim and objectives. It is stated that effective leaders are those who always make their efforts and assist their followers to accomplish their goal in limited resources. They also lead the employees who are frequently failed to complete the tasks. There are two kinds of leadership styles that are mainly considered by the leaders to lead employees and meet their specified goal such as transformational and transactional leadership style.  

In support of this, Men (2014) stated that leadership is defined as the procedure by which employees and leader make changes within an organization. A transformational leader motivates the employees by persuading them to present their unique and precious ideas. Beside this, transactional leader rewards those employees who perform better and punish those who do not perform better at the working place. It could demotivate the employee who is failed to accomplish their specified task.   

Managers use transactional leadership style to perform certain tasks and offer punishment or rewards to team members as per their performance outcome. Managers and team members build predetermined goals together. Under this leadership style, employees agree to follow the direction and leadership of the top authority to attain their goals. A manager uses power to review the outcome and train the workforces when team members are failed to attain their goals. Workforces get rewards like bonuses when they attain their goals.

The transformational leadership style relies on the high extent of communication from management to the attainment of goals. A leader encourages workforces and improves efficiency and productivity through communication and high transparency. This leadership style is required to involve the management to attain the goals. Leaders emphasize on the big picture at the workplace and assign the smaller project to the team for attaining the goal.

Research Rationale

In the view of Saleem (2015), employee satisfaction is defined as emotional state and evaluation of job. This evaluation could be positive, neutral and negative. An organization is used Maslow hierarchy need theory to assess the different need of employees. These needs could be physiological, security, social, self-esteem, and self-actualization needs. It could be concluded that job performance and job satisfaction is based on the work motivation and good mental state of employees. 

In support of this, Wong and Laschinger (2013) stated that there are different characteristics of employee’s satisfaction such as job, supervisor, pay, opportunities for promotion, and co-worker. The job satisfaction is defined as whether assigned tasks are interesting and facilitates the opportunity for learning. The supervisor should be able to enhance the interest of employees in their specified task as it could be supportive to easily enhance the employee satisfaction. In addition, pay is also a different important factor that could attract the employee and increase their job satisfaction level in less time. It could be a specified amount that is provided by the organization to their employee for their effort.  Along with this, the opportunity for promotion is demonstrated as opportunities existed for progression. Co-worker assessment evaluates that whether they are supportive, competent and friendly.

As per the view of Mulki Caemmerer and Heggde (2015), leadership is a procedure in which leader influences the behavior of subordinates to attain the goal of an organization. It is also opined that leadership has a favourable and strong impact on employee’s satisfaction. Although, there is a relationship between leadership style and job satisfaction yet, it could vary from person to person. In addition, it is also found that the effective leadership style could assist the group members to attain their goal in limited time.    

The leadership enables the subordinates to perform better and gain their job satisfaction. In such case, members would be able to carry out better performance and can contribute their best efforts in the working place as it could be supportive to enhance quality and improve the organizational performance. 

In contrast to this, Laschinger Wong Cummings and Grau (2014) evaluated that organization should have competencies of leadership which will be beneficial to provide job satisfaction experience. By using the effective leadership style, a leader can be capable to influence the job satisfaction level of employees, and their commitment and productivity. It was determined that workforces can feel a high level of satisfaction by getting more compensation and getting more opportunity for development of skill. It is persuaded by leadership and thinks that their managers demonstrate a clear vision as well as innovative ideas to act well.

Transformational Leadership

Vermeeren Kuipers and Steijn (2014) stated that leadership could be demonstrated as an essential interpreter of job satisfaction. It transforms the interest, goal, and needs by encouraging them to act for organizational goals as compared to emphasizing on their personal goals. Organizational culture can influence the job satisfaction of employees. It is identified that subordinates working in a socialist culture which derives employee’s satisfaction. A leader should be directive and leads to subordinates as people who act in individualistic culture as it would enhance their job satisfaction level. Leadership guidelines could be effective to explain the association amid leadership style and employee’s satisfaction.

In the view of Kara UysalSirgy and Lee (2013), leaders should create a comprehensive approach for superior as it will be beneficial to develop skills of employees and make an effective relation amid workers and organization. Leaders should use their logical skill to positively influence their employees. Consequently, workforces can develop a maximum level of organizational commitment and gain level of productivity.

Along with this, Collins Burrus and Meyer (2014) suggested that leaders should understand the impact of leadership on employees and its significance to build a vision for each workforce in long-term. The company should provide a vision to employees and motivate them to complete their task as it would be beneficial to create productive employees in an organization. Moreover, Organization should consider the transformational leadership style as it could be effective to engage the employees and gain their productivity in the targeted time frame.

This chapter of dissertation proposal incorporates different tools like philosophies, approaches, research design and data gathering technique. It is effective to get reliable data and solving the research issues. The aim of this section is to increase knowledge about the impact of leadership style on employee’s satisfaction. Further, these techniques are selected as per the nature of research to obtain an accurate outcome. The viable techniques of research may improve the research quality and its validity (Skogstad, Hetland, Glasø, and Einarsen, 2014).

Research philosophy is significant to create logical reasoning to assess, utilize, and pool the information about research issue. The key intention of using research philosophy is to execute and consider the assumption and belief of individuals as it is a significant tool to get real information. This assumption and belief could be used as the base of research strategies. In this, research will use the epistemology methodology that is a combination of interpretivism and positivism research philosophies. The selection of research philosophies relies on the realistic proposition of research issue. In this, the positivism philosophy emphasizes on facts and figures collected via observation (Martin, Liao, and Campbell, 2013). Under the positivism philosophy, the researcher has limited sources to pool the data regarding research issue because this philosophy does not consider human interest in conducting the research (Braun, Peus, Weisweiler, and Frey, 2013).

Employee Satisfaction

Apart from this, interpretivism research philosophy would be used to enhance the research quality. The main cause of using this philosophy is that it is related to the philosophical position of idealism. It is beneficial to collect theoretical understanding regarding research issues. This research is based on subjective nature as a researcher will use epistemology approach as it could support to get a valid result.

Ina addition, epistemology is the technique of obtaining the feasible information regarding research concern. It considers many factors such as nature of the concept, the validity of senses, constructing of concepts, logical reasoning, emotions, all mental things, thought, memories, and ideas. It is related to how people minds are associated with reality and whether these association could be invalid or valid (Martin, Liao, and Campbell, 2013).

It is an essential part of research methodology as it determines the cause for selecting the particular procedure of research. The research approaches categorized into different parts like Inductive and deductive approach. Inductive approach is implemented to assess the depth observation of facts and figures and also created theoretical aspects regarding research issue. In contrast to this, a deductive approach is implemented to construct the hypothesis. By using the formulation of a hypothesis, the researcher can accept the reject the research procedure associated with research issue (Herrmann, and Felfe, 2014).

For this dissertation, the inductive approach will be used by a researcher due to subjective nature of research. This approach will also be used due to its relevancy with interpretivism research philosophy. There is no need to construct the hypothesis hence inductive approach would be used and deductive approach would not be applied. Along with this, the inductive approach would be used by the researcher to pool the huge data associated with the impact of leadership style on employee’s satisfaction in Decapolis Group, Nigeria. This approach would be appropriate to address the different ideas and beliefs and also considers the information to conclude the result. In opposed to this, the deductive approach would not be used by a researcher as there is no need to verify the data regarding research issue.

A research design is effective to outline the research structure. By using the research design, a research can get right direction to comprehend the research issue to obtain the useful and appropriate data. It also aids the researcher to plan about the procedure of research study and enables them to make answer the several questions about research work. There are different kinds of research design which could be used in research such as quantitative and qualitative research design. Quantitative research design focuses on obtaining numerical information by using the statistical technique (McCann, Graves, and Cox, 2014).Qualitative research design enables the researcher to create opinion and constructs a hypothesis. It also provides the base for quantitative research. It facilitates researcher to get depth information regarding research issue.

Impact of Leadership Style on Employee Satisfaction

For this research design, the researcher will use mix research design as it will contain characteristics of both qualitative and quantitative research design. In this way, the qualitative approach will enable the researcher to get the theoretical data about leadership style and its impact on employee’s satisfaction. As opposed to this, the quantitative approach would be effective to get the statistical data regarding research concern. By using this approach, a researcher can attain the research objectives in a specified time period.

The research strategy is beneficial for a research to assess the ways of data collection by which research would be conducted. There are certain research strategies which allow the researcher to get feasible and valid research outcome. These strategies could be survey, focus group, literature review, and case study (Northouse, 2015).

For this dissertation, the researcher will use survey through a questionnaire to get the views and opinion of participants regarding research issue. By using this strategy, the researcher will be able to collect the fresh and new data regarding research problem. Further, this strategy will be used to assess the particular research matter within the limits of a company. For this dissertation, a descriptive case study will be used by a researcher to assess the cause and effect relationship between research issues. It will help to analyze the key issue regarding research (?erne, Dimovski, Mari?, Penger, and Škerlavaj, 2014).

As opposed to this, a literature review would be implemented by a researcher to accomplish the research objectives. In an analysis of literature review, a research will use different secondary sources like a reference book, annual report, journal article, offline sources and online websites to create depth understanding about research issue. Since, it creates the theoretical knowledge regarding leadership style that impacts on the employee’s satisfaction (Goetsch, and Davis, 2014). Consequently, it is beneficial to get an appropriate and valid outcome. Moreover, these strategies will also enable the researcher to increase the reliability and validity of research result.  

Data gathering technique is significant to attain the aim and objectives of research as it could also enable a researcher to pool the data efficiently. There are different data collection technique that will be implemented by a researcher like primary and secondary data. In this way, primary data is pooled from fresh sources like a focus group, observation, interview and survey through a questionnaire. At the same time, secondary data is pooled from different sources like journals article, books, online sites, annual report and offline sources (Yang, 2014).

Transactional Leadership

For this dissertation, both data collection technique will be used by the investigator to pool the information regarding research issue. It would also be beneficial to obtain the valid and reliable outcome. In this way, primary data will be collected by conducting the survey through questionnaire and secondary data will be collected from the literature review. Primary data would be used because it provides reliable information while secondary data would be used as it will take less time and cost to obtain the information (Mathieu, Neumann, Hare, and Babiak, 2014).

The sampling technique is implemented to choose the sample from the high amount of population to obtain the appropriate data. There is two sampling technique like probability and non-probability technique. Probability sampling technique could be implemented by a researcher to select the respondents without any biases. In contrast to this, a non-probability sampling technique is also called non-random sampling technique as there is no equal opportunity to select the research candidates for consuming the research (Demirtas, and Akdogan, 2015).

For this dissertation, probability sampling would be exercised by a researcher due to subjective nature of research issue. Under this, simple random sampling technique will be used to choose the respondents because it declines the chances of the biased issue from research by selecting participants randomly. It would be also effective to arrive at a valid conclusion by collecting the reliable information of research participants regarding research issue (Van Dierendonck, Stam, Boersma, De Windt, and Alkema, 2014). For this dissertation, 50 employees of Decapolis Group will be selected as a sample size from a different region of Nigeria.

A researcher could face ethical concern during the research such as plagiarism, violation of company act and manipulation of information with respect to secondary data. These issues could be avoided by offering full credit to different authors in terms of offering in-text and references in each paragraph. A researcher can also consider the policies associated with the privacy of personal information about respondents. As per this theory, personal data of research participants have not disclosed anywhere that is provided by the respondents during the research as it could support to make an effective relationship between the researcher and research participants (Demirtas, and Akdogan, 2015).

Under this dissertation, the ethical concept could be related to techniques and strategies which are implemented by an investigator to reduce the chances of ethical concern. Moreover, secondary data is collected from a large number of sources such as a journal, text book, articles and websites. Hence, it should be cited appropriately to complete the research in an ethical manner. An investigator has avoided the manipulation and plagiarism to eliminate the ethical concern. In addition, confidentiality is kept by the researcher during the research to avoid the ethical issue. Along with this, university guidelines and strategy associated with the code of conduct is implemented to avoid the ethical issues.

Factors Affecting Employee Satisfaction

Data analysis is a significant part of research methodology as it provides the stable and accurate result. Further several techniques could be implemented by the researcher to analyze the data like Excel, content analysis, and SPSS. There are different approaches of data analysis like inferential and statistical. For this dissertation, the descriptive statistical analysis would be used by a researcher to interpret the collected data. Furthermore, Ms-excel software would be used to present the information through different pie charts, graphs, and bar diagram. It would be also beneficial to attain the aim and objectives of research in a specified time period (Negussie, and Demissie, 2013).

Conclusion

From the above interpretation, it can be concluded that a leader is a person who motivates people to attain their aim and objectives. The transformational leader encourages the workforces by influencing them to demonstrate their precious and unique ideas whereas transactional leadership is a process which depends on the punishment and rewards. It could be summarized that leadership style has a positive impact on the job satisfaction because leaders have the ability to influence the employees in an organization. In addition, it could be concluded that leader should develop a comprehensive approach for superior because it would be effective to create skills and build trust among employees. The leader should make the vision and build an effective relationship between organization and employees. It can be evaluated that epistemology research philosophy would be used by the researcher due to subjective nature of research concern. The researcher will use mix research design because it will entail the features of both quantitative and qualitative research design. It could be also summarized that researcher will use survey through a questionnaire to obtain the opinion of respondents about research concern. For this dissertation, probability sampling technique would be used to choose the respondents because it provides equal chances to the researcher to select the research candidates. In addition, it can be concluded that descriptive statistics analysis will be implemented by a researcher to interpret the pooled information.

References

Aydin, A., Sarier, Y., &Uysal, S. (2013). The Effect of School Principals' Leadership Styles on Teachers' Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction. Educational Sciences: Theory and practice, 13(2), 806-811.

Braun, S., Peus, C., Weisweiler, S., & Frey, D. (2013). Transformational leadership, job satisfaction, and team performance: A multilevel mediation model of trust. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(1), 270-283.

?erne, M., Dimovski, V., Mari?, M., Penger, S., &Škerlavaj, M. (2014). Congruence of leader self-perceptions and follower perceptions of authentic leadership: Understanding what authentic leadership is and how it enhances employees’ job satisfaction. Australian Journal of management, 39(3), 453-471.

Collins, B. J., Burrus, C. J., & Meyer, R. D. (2014). Gender differences in the impact of leadership styles on subordinate embeddedness and job satisfaction. The leadership quarterly, 25(4), 660-671.

Demirtas, O., &Akdogan, A. A. (2015). The effect of ethical leadership behavior on ethical climate, turnover intention, and affective commitment. Journal of Business Ethics, 130(1), 59-67.

Dumdum, U. R., Lowe, K. B., &Avolio, B. J. (2013). A meta-analysis of transformational and transactional leadership correlates of effectiveness and satisfaction: An update and extension. In Transformational and Charismatic Leadership: The Road Ahead 10th Anniversary Edition (pp. 39-70). UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.