The Role of Leadership in Employee Motivation

Abstract

While this study is to draw from the autocratic and transformational leadership styles to advance further understanding on the underlying mechanisms that enable leaders to behave in an autocratic or transformational manner; and to affect employee motivation, their behaviour and consequently, their organisational oriented ventures. The paper intends to establish the role of leadership style in motivating the teaching staff to be committed to their work. From these 13 high schools, 184 teaching staff were selected to participate. It should be noted that these ‘high schools were not performing above the provincial benchmark. In order to obtain a holistic view of the overall leadership style present in the school system, a Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) was used. The researchers administered the questionnaires with the assistance of schools’ administrative clerks and the completed questionnaires were collected by the research support group. Data were analysed by descriptive statistics, such as percentages, frequency and the Cronbach-alpha coefficient to test among other things, the reliability of describing the impact and the leadership style in these schools. The study reveals that there strong relationship between transformational leadership behaviours and commitment (affective commitment; continuance commitment; and normative commitment). The findings further highlighted the relationship trust, inspiring a shared vision, encouraging creativity and emphasising development as positive aspect that motivate staff. While it can be argued that transformational leadership cannot raise job satisfaction, however the commitment of teachers to their job can raise job satisfaction and ultimately improve the school’s academic performance. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n3p175