research article

RESEARCH ARTICLE Advanced Science Letters Vol. y, xxxx-xxxx, 2017

Copyright © 2017 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved Printed in United States of America

Impact of Multi Factor Leadership Approach on Employee Conflict and Employee Performance in Malaysia Rashid Mehwish,a Tasmin Rosmaini,b* Shafiq Muhammadc a.b.cDepartment

of Production and Operation Management,Faculty of Technology Management and Business,Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia,86400 Parit Raja, BatuPahat,Johor, Malaysia.

Leadership is the need of today’s business circumstances. Because care of the worker helps to enhance profit. Leader’s quality flourishes the life’s quality 1. Followers thinking, approach,conduct and comfort is influenced by Leadership behavior. Development of leader’s abilities and capability is because of the preparation and training, a leader gets to progress, resulting in better leadership. According to 2, organizational and social atmosphere and leader’s interaction in it, makes Leadership multifaceted as also stated by 3, 4.Solving problems and handling crises to manage followers are the characteristics of leadership. Trait, contingency, behavioral, and transformational are the main leadership theories discussed by5. Multi-factor or full range of leadership theory (Transformational, Transactional and Laissez-faire) was developed by 6is a generalized model for diverse cultures, organizations and different management levels as described by 7.Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire is frequently used instrument to explore leadership as quoted by numerous authors. Keywords: Leadership, Employee Conflict, Employee Performance

1. INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1. MULTI FACTOR LEADERSHIP The transformational and transactional leadership theory, which is also referred to as the multifactor leadership theory 8 or the full range leadership theory. It covers all three approaches of transformational leadership, transactional leadership and laisses-faire leadership, these are very important and frequently used in modern literature9. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire is frequently used instrument to explore leadership as quoted by numerous authors. Transformational Leadership 10 presented the popular theory of transformational leadership. According to 11procedure of creating loyalty to firm objectives to empower employees to achieve these is called Transformational leadership. Transformational leaders are more suitable in conflicting circumstances and messyatmospheres12. The reason of this efficiency and suitability of transformational leadership is because they seek new ways of working for conflict13. Transformational leadership discusses following characteristics; 1. Idealized influence:Idealized influence or charisma describes leader who act as strong role models for followers, these leaders have very high standards of moral and ethics. Its main attribute are vision,trust, respect, and integrity. Transformational leaders serve as admired, trusted, and respected role models who inspire idealized influence behavior according to high ethical and moral *[email protected] 1

Adv.Sci. Lett. y, xxxx-xxxx, 2017

standards 2. Inspirational motivation: This factor is descriptive of leaders who communicate high expectations to followers, inspiring them through motivation. Team spirit is enhanced by this type of leadership. Its main purpose is commitment to goals and communication. Inspirational motivation is when a leader acts in a way that causes people around him/her to be motivated to work better, usually caused by the leader instilling a sense of meaning in the work for the follower. 3. Intellectual stimulation:It includes leadership that stimulates followers to be creative and innovative. Its main attribute are rationality and problem solving. Intellectual stimulation is demonstrated when a leader asks questions to try and increase productivity and innovation 14. This dimension is exhibited when a leader asks questions to increase innovation and creativity14. 4. Individualized consideration:This factor is representative of leader who provides a supportive climate, in which, they listen carefully to the individual needs of followers .Its main goal is to give personal attention, and empowerment to followers. Transformational leaders can also reduce conflict by being sensitive to their subordinates’ needs. This individualized consideration could therefore encourage their employees to respect and understand the position and needs of others and, at times, overcome any rigid positions they may hold 15. Transactional leadership As stated by 15, personal interest of individual followers is focussed by Transactional leaders to inspire them and keep them motivated.Goals of the followers are measured and set by xxxx-xxxx-/2017/x/xxxx/xxx

doi: xx.xxxx/asl.2017.xxxx


Transactional leaders and guide followers for execution of those goals13. According to 11, Leader’s focus in transactional leadership is on objectives of firms, and they achieve these through employees’ empowerment. Discussion and sharing between followers and leaders is hallmark of this approach of leadership. According to previous research, behavior and attitude of employees gets better in this approach14. Three main parts are included in this. 1. Contingent reward:rewards of staff for desired work. 2. Active managment by exception: moniter work performance and corrects. 3. Passive managment by exception: it wait until problem occur and then deal 12. Laissez-faire Leadership In multifactor leadership, Laissez-faire is the third type of leadership to handle conflict. In this approach, leaders do not take much interest in the employees working. This is way , this approach is also known as anti-transactional. It is not action centric approach, leaders avoid responsibilities and refrain from taking risks.It has been cited in previous literature that this approach badly hamper follower’s performance. Though, as stated by previous researchers, followers themseleves solve their differences when leader is laissez-faire15. 1.2. CONFLICT As described by 16, struggle among different groups (minimum two parties)who think their objectives are not being achieved due to obstacles from others is called conflict. Conflict exist at all places around the word. Conflict occurs when bad feelings and emotions rise among the different members in a group, or in different groups. Diverse thinking, background, work, procedures and expectations are the reasons behind the conflict. In different scearios and situations, managers and leaders must exert their right approach to handle and manage different conflicts. As, there are different approaches to handle conflicts, avidance, accomodation, and confrontation are adopted among many, by leaders. Humans and circumstances are the main focus when research to manage conflicts is performaed. Though conflicts depends both on circumstances and human behaviors. Organizational performance can be improved by solving these conflicts, and here comes the important roles of multifactor leadership. Task conflict Work related conflicts are mainly task conflicts. These are related to conflicts to meet objevtives. As stated by 17, differences and misunderstandings in works is the reason behind the raise of these conflicts in organizations 16. These type of conflictsare due to the clash in job resonsibilities in an organization. Task conflict can also develop through decisions such as current hiring strategies or information to include in an annual report 18. However, task conflict has a more positive and significant relationship on other important organizational outcomes such as subordinate’s affective organizational commitment and intention to quit. Relational conflict According to 17, relational conflict happens because employees compatibility isses with each other in an organization. Aggressiveness and hate among different parties, leads to anger and bad feelinngs in this type of conflict. In the previous research, it is stated that types of relational conflicts are behaviroral and emotional. Task related issues and not-task related issues are the main difference in the cognitive and relational conflicts. Studies on relationship conflict have been

RESEARCH ARTICLE consistently suggesting that relationship conflict leads to negative individual, group, and/or organizational outcomes. Process conflict Process conflicts result from disagreements regarding the procedural issues surrounding task accomplishment, such as delegation and logistical matters. Process conflict refers to how the work gets done 19. Process conflict is when members assign tasks like, who is going to finalize the report or who is the presenter. According 17 in group conflict majority of the personnel debated issue is administrative. On the one hand, conflicts may improve decision-making quality because of the different opinions brought into the process; on the other hand, conflicts may also create interpersonal tension and generate distress among teammates. The cognitive nature of task conflict and the affective nature of relationship conflict 20 (Mooney et al., 2007) may channel their effects to task-driven and relationship-driven behaviors respectively. 1.3. CONFLICT MANAGMENT STRATEGIES: There are numerous types of conflicts in any firm, strategies to manage conflicts are adopted to solve these conflicts.Conflict managment strategies have five main types mainly focussed on employee, circumstances and employee- circumstances relation. Studies also report a connection between conflict resolution and atachment styles, setting the argument that leadership styles may influence conflict negotiation strategies. Conflict management is the practice of Efficent and otimize manner for identification and handling of conflict is CMS. Communication and coordination must be proper, focus are necessarry attributes in a leader to solve conflicts. 21presented there famous two dimentional model for conflict handling. Mutual cooperation and regard, protection and learning are major characteristics of constructive conflict management22. These approaches are discussed below briefly as stated by 23. 1. Competing:Pursuit of own concerns at the other person expense is competition. It has been identified with forcing behaviour and win-lose arguing. 2. Collaboratting:Attempting to work in coperative, trust and eqality of power with confronting disagreements and problem solving is collaborating approach.It is not surprising to find that the most valued conflict management strategy in business is collaboration, i.e. the win-win styleof managing conflict. 3. Compromising: Compromising style is characterized by an intermediate concern for others as well as for self. Intermediate stance of both parties. 4. Avoiding:In this approach, own interests are not followed. Position is not taken in this approach, it is based on retrival and withdrawal. This is non-confrontational style23. 5. Accommodating:Neglecting own concerns to satisfy concern of other people. It has been identified with attempting to soothe the other person and seek harmony. According to 25, conflict resolution impacts social changes positively along with contributing to handle the conflicts in organization and society. Understanding background and traditions of each other is important to learn conflict handling. 26 argue that transformational leaders reduce conflict levels among employees is reduced by transformational leadership. Conflict must be decreased by transactional leaders because conflicts hamper rewards in future. Transformational leadership has a positive influence on collaborating and competing style are positively influenced by transformational approach of leadership. Conflict handling is positively influenced by transactional leadership. Avoiding strategy is positively influenced by laisses-faire leadership approach for management of conflict 15. 2

RESEARCH ARTICLE


There are five stages for evolution of conflict resolution, 1. Awareness 2. Training 3. Mediation 4. Reinforcement 5. Institutionalization

References and Notes:

Employee performance and Leadership approaches: Organizations are facing many difficulties now a days, which impacts their performance as mentioned by 27, organizations try hard to find methods to improve employee performance. Inrole is one type of employee performance while the extra-role is the other 28. In-role duties are within the job description while extra-role is out of usual work limits. Employee’s defined activities for their job are their in-role performance. As described by 29. It was presented by 30that employee performance enhances in transformational leadership, over powering social issues in groups. Transactional leadership has also a positive linkage to employee performance and job satisfaction.

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2. HYPOTHESIS Keeping in view the above literature of Multifactor Leadership (Transformational, Transactional, Laissez-faire) approach, the following hypotheses are formulated: H1: Multifactor leadership approach has positive relationship with employee performance. H1a. Transformational leadership has positive relationship with employee performance. H1b. Transactional leadership has positive relationship with employee performance. H1c. Laissez-faire leadership has positive relationship with employee performance. H2. Multifactor leadership model has negative relationship with employee conflict. H3. Employee conflict has negative relationship with employee performance. H3a.Task conflict has positive relationship with employee performance. H3b.Relationship conflict has negative relationship with employee performance. H3c.Process conflict has an effect on employee performance. H5: Conflict management strategies moderates the relationship between employee conflict and employee performance. 3. CONCLUSION: In today’s socially interacted world, work-family conflicts affects employees and hinder the organizational performance, to enhance employee performance, these conflicts have to be resolved and Multifactor Leadership approach is an important approach to achieve this objective. Conflict resolution and work-family balance are primarily responsibilities of leadership and MFL approach, according to literature and our research is an important approach to achieve this for employee and organizational performance. Acknowledgement: “This paper was partly sponsored by the Centre for Graduate Studies UTHM” KertaskerjainiditajasebahagiannyaolehPusatPengajianSiswaza h"

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