An Assessment of Leadership Styles and Employee Performance in Small and Medium Enterprises in Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: SMEs are generally regarded as an important engine driving the growth of many economies as well as providing opportunities for job creation and rural development, which accounts for 10 % of the total manufacturing output and 70% of employment in Nigeria. In view of the importance of SMEs, a sector that has the potential for solving Nigeria’s unemployment and poverty problems, it is important to understand and critically examine the factor(s) impeding its growth to be able to proffer solutions that would identify the strengths and weaknesses, analyze and assess problems in the SMEs and provide information on the effects leadership has on employee job performance. Some of the advantages claimed for SMEs include encouragement of entrepreneurship, greater likelihood for SMEs to utilize labour intensive technologies positively impact on employment generation. As argued by some researchers, the actual influence of leaders on organizational outcomes is overrated and romanticized as a result of biased attributions about leaders. Study Design: This quantitative cross-sectional study in the form of survey, administered questionnaire to randomly selected participants. The sample size for the quantitative component was 100 comprising of 21 management staff and 79 employees from the five selected SME firms in Yola, Adamawa State. In-depth interview involving 12 personnel (4 management staff and 8 employees) was also used. Results: Results were presented using both descriptive and inferential statistics. It was evident that the predominant type of leadership in the enterprises studied is participative democracy, and that leadership styles have effect on the performance of employee. This was supported by the fact that results of the computed Chi square test (24.55 and 17.39) for the first and second hypotheses (at P≤0.05, df = 95) are greater than the tabulated (0.078 and 0.136) (at P≤0.05, df = 95). Conclusion: This research was able to show that leadership styles have effect on the employee performance and also the leadership style in use is participative democracy.