Discussion and Implications
This study provides important management insights concerning the relationship between leadership style and job satisfaction. Findings from the study show the sales managers and supervisors at GE obtaining much of their job satisfaction from internal factors. On the other hand, external factors at GE, such as company policies, do not contribute as much as intrinsic values, to employee job satisfaction.
Employee Job satisfaction
Nevertheless, the study at GE shows that the influence of transactional-reliant reward factors varies from one sales managers or supervisor to another. The study explains how different variable affect the individual considerations towards their jobs. There were variations of the responses by sales managers and supervisors. The differences occurred because everyone has personal desires of initiating relationships with their superiors.
It illustrates to the leadership that there are additional factors to look at, in addition to leadership style, when they analyze employee performance. The sales managers and supervisors conducted a personal evaluation of the company’s leadership, which then became apparent in their responses.
For example, the high emphasis on how the leadership treats individuals was important for most sales and managers. However, the absence of the criterion on others indicates that it is not the only factor influencing their perception of their job. However, when it is a factor, it has a strong effect on the results.
Consequently, while the context of the research by Rose (2011) and this research are similar, the outcome is different because the organization studies are distinct. The underlying relationship is that both extrinsic and intrinsic values affect job satisfaction. Sales managers and supervisors can still be satisfied with the absence of an appropriate leadership style as long as the other factors retain a strong influence.
The absence of material rewards makes the leadership style, of a firm, crucial to its overall performance, which depends on the employee satisfaction. Thus, the study shows that employers are able to obtain high performance without necessarily altering their leadership style. However, the level of success will not be optimal until all extrinsic and intrinsic values for part of the organization’s culture.
Furthermore, the study findings show that extrinsic values could lead to large degrees of job satisfaction. However, this would only occur where there is an absence of intrinsic values or in the case of this study; the praise given to sales managers and supervisors was physical.
A similar study conducted at Islamic Azad University branches in Tehran, Iran, Fathemeh and Hamidifar gave the same results. It demonstrated that individualized consideration, as a sub-variable, was a powerful predictor of job satisfaction just like transactional-reliant reward factors.
Here, job satisfaction included promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, recognition and the nature of the work (Rose 2001). Thus, we can rightfully state that supervision, which extends to leadership style, plays a crucial role in employee job satisfaction.
Other studies have as well found out similar relationships of job satisfaction and intrinsic or extrinsic values. For example, Rose (2001) also views job satisfaction as a two-way concept between inherent and extrinsic satisfaction dimensions. Rose (2001) explains that intrinsic sources of satisfaction depend on the personal characteristics such as a show of initiative, relationship with supervisors and type of work performed.
The characteristics symbolize features of their jobs. On the other hand, extrinsic sources of satisfaction are situational. They depend on the environment. These include pay, promotion, job security and praise. Concisely, extrinsic sources are financial and material rewards of the job.
The absence of extrinsic factors in the determination of job satisfaction at GE could be explained by the leadership style and the organizational culture within the firm. The factors come to play more when the firm has enough resources to create the desired environment for employee satisfaction.
In the case of GE, either external benefits were nonexistent or their impact was too little, compared to the daily interaction with the firm’s leadership. Typically, a firm will provide more extrinsic factors when it wants to attract additional talent over the short term. Intrinsic factors of job-satisfaction take time to manifest are only effective after a long time.
The heavy dependence on intrinsic factors by GE shows that the firm has no immediate talent recruitment need. Looking at the overall job satisfaction of the sales managers and supervisors, we can say that the job market if fairly saturated.
Therefore, GE does not encounter the pressure to provide extrinsic factors to retain its talent. Another reason to explain why the values do not contribute as much as intrinsic values on job satisfaction at GE could be the business environment standard the company operates. If every other firm in the same industry provides all the values, then sales managers and supervisors take it for granted that their jobs come with those benefits.
In a very competitive market, there is little distinction of products. For this case, there could be very pithy differentiation in the employee packages provided by competitor firms.
Therefore, firms compete on the quality of their organizational culture, which affects the relationship between sales managers and supervisors and the leadership. In looking at job satisfaction, we shall examine the perspective of the employee more than that of the leaders because, the subject is relative to the perception of the former.
This study shows that sales directors and overall company leadership act as a factor influencing sales managers and supervisors job satisfaction.
Therefore, people occupying similar positions in companies like GE should consider the impact of their actions toward their juniors. The position of a sales director should be people oriented and decisions should resonate with the majority of the staffs under the director for most of them to remain satisfied with their jobs.
Leadership Style
In this study, sales directors at GE scored highly on the consideration dimension compared to the initiation dimension. The former closely links to the ideas of people-oriented behavior while the latter refers to task orienting behavior. The leadership styles at GE borrow heavily from the type of interactions the managers have with their sales managers and supervisors.
The reaction of sales managers and supervisors towards specific assignments plays carry a higher value than the task that should be performed. For that reason directors consider more of how an assignment affects the employee, than how its impacts on the business.
The interpersonal relationships at GE show that the leadership works closely with sales managers and supervisors and meets their needs in non-material ways. Briefly, a consideration dimension puts the employee at the forefront of decision making while the initiation dimension regards the task first. Therefore, the resulting leadership style at GE is democratic.
High scores on the people-oriented behavior side, show that a democratic leadership style relates positively with employee job satisfaction. Furthermore, examinations of my findings show that representative style yields elevated job satisfaction levels because it involves sales managers and supervisors in decision-making processes and improves their buy-in for decisions.
Despite its benefits, the democratic style suffers from a slow settlement process because it involves many people. When the tardiness leads to a poor relationship with supervisors, then the type of leadership becomes a source of employee job dissatisfaction. The delays in decision making also delay the chances for sales managers and supervisors to show initiative.
At GE, the effect of slow decision-making manifest in both sales managers and supervisors and directors preferred way of interacting with each other. The sales managers and supervisors see no immediate need for extrinsic values as factors of their job satisfaction. On the other hand, the directors take very long to change their styles, and everyone tends to prefer the present conditions.
This has become part of the culture at GE. Past performance affects how much initiative the leadership will undertake to improve or maintain the current competitiveness of the firm. Therefore, the preferred choice of leadership could have been influenced by the position of the company in the market.
The outlook of the company plays a role in giving sales managers and supervisors a sense of belonging and purpose. In addition to leadership style, the staffs might exhibits high satisfaction levels because of the business environment context.
Thus, the sales managers and supervisors may affect leadership style, and not the case assumed here that leadership affects job satisfaction. Nevertheless, the amount of literature supporting the contrary position is scanty. The results of this research are more credible because the pretest and posttest analysis exhibits a significant change, attributable to leadership style.
It is worthy to note that the organization and its leadership affect sales managers and supervisors in a similar way. Leaders are the face of the organization and rules or regulations become an extension of the leaders. In the company, sales managers and supervisors look at how strongly the leader enforces the company’s culture. They equate the enforced attributes with the leader’s style.
For example, where some rules are overlooked and the company’s supervision does not care much; sales managers and supervisors disassociate the rule, with the company. They view it as a foreign culture and do not use it to define their satisfaction. On the other hand, the most stressed rules become synonymous with the leader who enforces them, hence his or her style as perceived by the sales managers and supervisors.
At GE, the sales director used a single approach on every situation. They preferred to make decision based on the reaction of their juniors showing that they valued the feedback.
The persistent use of the same method in conducting their duties became their recognizable identity in the eyes of sales managers and supervisors. Even when situations cause a variation in their response, the predominant qualities mentioned above still emerged.
Sales managers and supervisors have little power to influence the management competence of their company, and thus have a decreased influence of extrinsic factors on their job satisfaction.
For example, the study shows that praise of sales managers and supervisors inside GE does not always result to tangible rewards that bring lasting job satisfaction. The rewards could be early yearly raises, promotions to higher offices or bonuses. Instead, most sales managers and supervisors ended up with a good job email or job phone call.
General Managers (GM) operate more on the consideration dimension while higher directors put more effort on the initiation structure dimension. In this study, the sales director leaned towards consideration dimensions more than he operated in the initiation structure dimension.
Similar studies on job satisfaction in relation to leadership style, such as Brooke (2007), show that it would be appropriate for the general manager to work also in the structure dimension. There is a need to delineate the relationship of the leader and members of his group. This is a way to establish a well-defined pattern for the organization, with communication channels and procedures (Brooke 2007).
The findings of this study show that even when a leader uses a style with mixed characteristics, only a few techniques that resonate with the members will become dominant. The inclusion of praise as part of the leadership style yielded no change in the predominant perception. This is important because it contributes to the knowledge of efficient leadership.
Job Satisfaction and Leadership Style
Sales directors at GE favored a coaching approach, which fits into the democratic leadership style category. Here, they made decisions and acted to motivate their juniors and increase sales at GE.
An appropriate explanation on why sales directors favor the democratic style of leadership as a way to offer maximum employee job satisfaction dwells on their experience with the style. At GE, some sales directors stuck to one style that assisted them in achieving successes early in their careers. Past results coerced them to use the same techniques and personality traits in trying to achieve similar or better results.
Sales managers and supervisors thought that learning in the organization was a rigid process, and the leadership did not find compelling reasons to use alternative leadership styles to improve satisfaction, participation and performance. They mentioned that sales directors did not experiment with different styles.
Those who were dissatisfied thought that the sales directors lacked a credible finding that would inform their choice of leadership style. The style matching the personality of the leader becomes the dominant style. Absence of feedback mechanisms also promoted the establishment of one style irrespective of its effect on job satisfaction.
Previous research has shown the proven benefits of varying the leadership style, in response to the company environment (Goldsmith 2006).
At GE, there was no diversification, as explained by sales directors and supervisors, because the objectives of the firm did not explicitly define the desired level of employee job satisfaction. Those who were dissatisfied mentioned that the leaders at GE did not have a scorecard to record and evaluate the impact of their leadership style; therefore, they did not see the advantage of trying different styles.
The lack of pressure from sales managers and supervisors could also have led to the instance of using only the democratic leadership style. When sales managers and supervisors do not differentiate between the company culture and the style of the leadership, they will accept any form of leadership and shift their satisfaction perception to different factors.
If this occurred at GE, then it explains why sales directors stuck with a given style and thought it was appropriate. The effectiveness of a leadership style in enhancing the job satisfaction levels for sales managers and supervisors depends on the absence of other factors that also shape the employee experience, at the firm.
Where the other factors pay a more crucial role than the leadership style, like the case of GE, one may be tempted to ignore the connection between the two variables. The recurrent use of a specific style by the different directors at GE shows that there is a relation between the style used, and the results obtained from their sales managers and supervisors.
This clarifies that there is indeed a relationship of leadership style and employee job satisfaction. Leaders will seek to improve the performance at their firm and sales managers and supervisors will perform better when they have a high value, for their jobs.
Different situations called for a change in the leadership approach used by sales directors. When there were mismatches in the leadership style and expectations, the sales manager left the department. These findings contribute to the understanding that it is important for leadership to act on feedback and alter the leadership style appropriately.
Conclusions
This study was to explore the leadership styles exhibited by sales directors in the sales department at GE and the level of satisfaction by managers and supervisors within this department. To establish this relationship, the study examined the leadership style of the sales directors at GE.
Furthermore, it looked at how the identified style affects the employee job-satisfaction and explains the relationship in the overall context of job satisfaction. The paper demonstrates that the relationship of leadership style and job satisfaction is linear; there is a positive relationship between a considerate or initiating structure of leadership of sales directors and the satisfaction levels.
Moreover, the degree of influence a leader has on sales managers and supervisors depends on the presence of other satisfaction values and their importance to sales managers and supervisors. While employee satisfaction depends on leadership style, it can still prevail without an appropriate style if other attributes of job satisfaction are met.
Implications for Future Research
Further research should develop more understanding of the source of job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. For example, job stresses could have a positive relationship with job satisfaction. Thus, studies should examine leadership style relative to job stresses.
Implications for Managers
The study has investigated the relationship of management style and job satisfaction. Findings elaborate the absence of a specific style, which fits all sources of job satisfaction. Therefore, management should adopt an amalgamation of leadership styles, which are both responsive to organizational structure and employee expectations.
This is achievable through proper communication as findings show a strong relation of satisfaction and director’s consideration of employee needs. The study shows how leadership style affects satisfaction levels similarly within GE. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the absence of negative results from the use of a specific style prolongs its use within GE and hinders sales directors from experimenting with other leadership styles.
To realize the potentials of extrinsic values on job satisfaction at GE, there needs to be a shift of the leadership style. The acclaimed executive coach Marshall Goldsmith states that the application of one-best-style on all situations may work at first but eventually fails (Goldsmith 2006).
Thus, sales managers need to learn and adapt, to succeed. The positive and significant relationship between extrinsic factors and job satisfaction, from this study, also support the above claim. Yousef (2000) conducted a research on organizational commitment and its relation with job satisfaction.
He confirms that to improve employee’s satisfaction, an organization has to adapt to the appropriate leadership behavior. As the survey shows, the ideal leadership style of the sales director is a mix of democratic and autocratic styles.
The ensuing behavior should enhance organizational commitment and increase both, job satisfaction and performance (Yousef 2000).
Effective communication between senior management and sales managers and supervisors is important because it will help sales managers and supervisors understand the organization’s business goals, policies and vision, and keep sales managers and supervisors informed about what is going on in the organization.
Senior management could keep sales managers and supervisors well informed through company-wide meetings and the use of technology in top-to-bottom communications.
Implications for Policy Makers
Given the findings of this study, the following recommendations would lead to a positive relationship of leadership style and job satisfaction at GE. Policy makers could compel firms to adopt the quality working life approach (QWL), a job design system that has proven to be effective with regard to the enriching employee’s jobs, and providing a higher sense of challenge and achievement.
The QWL advocates for the provision of intrinsic rewards such as, a feeling of success, and extrinsic rewards such as benefits, recognition, and promotion.
Results that are more effective would come through job training, which includes modifying organizational objectives and developing new methods of coordination such as, planned progression, job rotation, re-assigning supervision, and temporary promotion until the employee prove his or her capability.
Limitations
The respondents of this study could have withheld or altered their responses because of intimidation. Both the sales directors and sales managers had prior knowledge of the questions to be administered in the study. The limited period could have negated the understanding of previous leadership actions that would lead to present changes.
Reference List
Brooke, SL 2007, ‘Leadership and job satisfaction’, Academic Leadership, vol 4, no. 1, via The On-Line Journal.
Goldsmith, M 2006, Coaching for leadership: the practice of leadership coaching from the world’s greatest coaches, 2nd edn, John Wiley & Sons, San Francisco.
Rose, M 2001, Disparate measures in the workplace. Quantifying overall job satisfaction. Web.
Yousef, DA 2000, ‘Organizational commitment: a mediator of the relationships of leadership behavior with job satisfaction and performance in a non-western country’, Journal of Managerial Psychology, vol 15, no. 1, pp. 6-24, via Emerald Insight.