The effect of leadership styles on job-stress-related presenteeism

Abstract

Leaders of organisations are faced with a severe challenge due to a rapidly changing business environment. Increased competition and lack of knowledge workers have seen organisations operating with lean labour forces, thus applying excessive pressure on these workers to deliver high quality products and services. Studies have shown that constant excessive pressure on these knowledge workers cause stress leading to loss of productivity while still being at work, giving rise to a phenomenon known as presenteeism. Studies have fallen short in measuring presenteeism as it has only been focussed on sickness as an antecedent for presenteeism. A recent study on presenteeism has shown evidence of job stress to be a precursor of presenteeism thus providing a new construct called 'job-stress-related presenteeism, and huge opportunity for studies in this field. This study aims to assess the effect that leadership styles have on job-stress-related presenteeism as leaders drive organisational performance. 242 responses from 12 widely categorised industries were collected and analysed. Analysis included principal component analysis and various correlations to assess for associations between the two variables. The results indicated that leadership style can be used as a predictor for job-stress-related presenteeism.