The relationship between perceived leadership styles and organisational constraints: An empirical study in Goleman's typology

Introduction

The style of a leader's work influences their subordinates’ motivation and performance as well as the organisation's climate. Supervisors can either eliminate or exaggerate obstacles that impede employees’ pursuit of organisational goals. One of the sources of job stress is organisational constraints. Leaders may influence the degree of such impediments by helping employees or by creating additional demands, depending on how well they understand what their subordinates need. Therefore, a leader's emotional intelligence might be an important factor.

Objective

The aim of this paper is to examine relationships between the subordinates’ perception of their supervisor's’ leadership style and organisational constraints. For this purpose we turned to Goleman's leadership typology, which distinguishes six distinct styles, each springing from different components of emotional intelligence.

Method

Employees (n = 235) assessed their immediate supervisors with respect to the characteristics of six leadership styles based on Goleman's (2000) typology: authoritative, democratic, affiliative, coaching, coercive and pacesetting leadership. Using Organisational Constraints Scale (Spector & Jex, 1998), participants also rated the level of organisational constraints experienced in their workplace.

Results

The results of the hierarchical regression analysis showed that there is a negative relationship between authoritative and coaching leadership styles and organisational constraints levels. The more authoritative and the more coaching-orientated the supervisors were, the less pronounced employees’ reported job-related impediments were. The remaining four leadership styles did not allow us to predict the level of organisational constraints.

Conclusion

The study adds to the literature by demonstrating that certain leadership characteristics may buffer employees’ stress levels at work by means of minimising the organisational constraints. These findings are especially important in times of economic crisis, the consequences of which may be alleviated with proper leadership behaviours.