A study of the relationship between leadership style and performance - a focus on South African listed and non-listed companies

Abstract

The topics of leadership and strategy have attracted considerable interest from both academics and practitioners. Much of the interest in the two areas is based on explicit and implicit claims that both leadership and strategy are linked to organisational performance. This paper examines the nature of the relationship between participative leadership style and performance, and authoritative leadership style and performance. The study hypothesised that authoritative leadership style leads to achievement of the objectives of a strategic plan (hypothesis 1), and that participative leadership style leads to achievement of the objectives of a strategic plan (hypothesis 2). The research was a quantitative study. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire, which was emailed to 200 randomly selected respondents. 48 responses were received. This represents a total response rate of 24%. Of the total 48 responses, 10 were eliminated from the study due to errors. A linear regression method was used to test the hypotheses. The regression analyses have revealed that participative leadership style and performance, and authoritative leadership style and performance are not related. The two variables each explain less than 1% of the variance in performance. As a result, both null hypotheses were not rejected. The paper concludes with a number of implications for future research studies.