Influence of Delegating Leadership on Employee Performance at the International Airports in Kenya

Abstract

The type of stewardship engaged by the senior management of a firm has a direct bearing on the employee performance. There is no ideal style of leadership that fits all organizations and hence the top echelon has to select the most appropriate bearing that will drive the firm in the desired direction and bear the sought after outcomes. Several airports in Africa today continue to experience low employee performance as a result of the type of leadership selected by the top management and hence the need for diligence when picking the type of stewardship to be deployed in African Airports. This paper sought to establish the influence of delegation on employee performance at four international airports in Kenya, namely: Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi; Moi International Airport, Mombasa; Kisumu International Airport and Eldoret International Airport. Positivism philosophy was preferred in this study because it advocates for the use of accurate and verifiable evidence that is free from assumptions and opinions of the researcher. A survey research was used to conduct the study. The respondents were first line; middle level and senior level managers of the five departments involved in the processing of air passengers within the four international airports in Kenya. These were; airport security employees, port health and quarantine services employees, passenger airlines operating within the four international airports in Kenya employees, immigration and border control employees and finally the customs services employees. Data was gathered from primary sources using self-administered structured questionnaires. The data analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics. From the Linear regression, the value of p was established as p<.05 (p value of 0.00 and ꞵ=0.474) and therefore the null hypothesis was rejected indicating that delegation has a significant impact on employee performance.