CHAPTER ONE

                                                            INTRODUCTION

1.1     Background to the Study

            Leadership is a vital element in the social relationship of groups at work. Groups need leaders and leaders need followers. Leadership is a dynamic process at work in a group whereby one individual oversee a particular period of time and in particular, in an organization context influence the other group members to commit themselves freely to the achievement of task or goals leadership is as old as man. There are many definitions of leadership which are as follows:

            Richard (1997) sees leadership as the act or process of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and or enthusiastically towards the achievement of the group mission. Ovwigho (2004) defines leadership as the process of getting things done through people Heinz (2005) on his part defined leadership as the influence, that is, the art or process of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals.

            Gareth (2002) defines leadership as the process by which an individual exerts influence over other people, inspires, motivates and directs their activities to help achieve group of organization goals. Management activities such as planning, organizing and decision making are dominant until the leader trigger the power of motivation in people and guide’s them towards goals and achievement.

            To this end, leading is to guild conduct, direct and control. Leaders are individual who are able to exert organization goals (Gareth, 2000). They emerge to ginger a group to achieve their objectives with maximum application of its capabilities. They do not stand behind to push and produce but they place themselves before the group to facilitate progress and inspire the group to accomplish the organization goal. A good example is that of the orchestra leaders whose functions is to produce coordinated sound and correct tempo through integrated effort of the instrumentalist

            Leadership is not necessarily confine to one person, but may be sheared between members. A recent focus on the leader’s role in motivating members implies that they may counsel, support, help, persuade, or elicit the participation of others in some degree of goal settings. Leaders also manipulated, entice, reward, coerce or harangue. Although some researcher’s exclude some of those activities from the definition of leadership. Strictly speaking, Ricky (2002) sees leadership as a process, the use of non-coercive influence to shape the group or organizational goals and motivate behaviour towards the achievement of those goals and help define group or organization cultures and secondly, as a property, leadership initiates and maintains social structure. The social system is to speak “programmed” through leadership, understandably, leadership then should be a simple and parsimonious approach to understanding the larger society.

            Leadership can have consequence for the lives and welfare of large members of people, therefore, those who are concerned with the political consequences of human action must be concerned with leadership. Leadership has an effect on the performance on any organization. It affect both the employees work performance and productivity of the organization. Employees at all level tend to evaluate their jobs and their organization according to how of leadership. That is behaviour that is being exercised by the manager or superior. For a leader to lead effectively, he needs to understand his subordinate and situation of the organization as a whole. Felder, Koontz, Likert and other have helped to clarify the specific relationship among leadership style and situational variables. In a nutshell, leadership relates to followership, people tend to follow those whom they see as a means of satisfying their needs and to have a sense of belonging.

            The responsibilities of a leader are to encourage people to contribute effectively and willingly towards the accomplishment of organizational goal and to satisfy their own personal needs. He must be aware of human problems as sensitive towards the hope and aspiration of those who he supervises and a capacity for analysis of emotional force that motivate their conduct. If this is not achieved, the project entrusted in him will not work no matter how often wages are increased. The leadership style and it performance determine the growth and survival of every organization. He influences the subordinate to work in consonance with laid down rules and regulation of the organization to achieve the determined goals.

1.2     Statement of the Problem

            In line with the conventional view of leadership style, organization goal is achieved in less time, if its leadership style is flexible since an average human being has an inherent dislike, for work and will avoid it if he can. Because of this human nature of dislike for work, most employees must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened to get them put in adequate effort to achieve organizational goals. The average human prefers to be directed, want to avoid responsibility, but yet want security. Also, an average man is by nature lazy and work as little as possible (McGregor, 1960).

            Leader-member relations refer to the personal relationship between the relationships. This maybe good when, for example the leader is accepted by the group and when the relationship is one of trust, friendliness and corporation. A poor relationship maybe characterized by the rejection of the leader by mutual distrust, dislike and lack of corporation, during the visit of the research to institute continuing education, Asaba. The researcher found out that the following were lacking in the organization.

1.      Lack of team spirit between the management and employees

2.      Lack of the commitment on the part of management does not foster production.

3.      That there is preferential treatment by the management to some thereby employees making others to feel more or less important.

1.3     Research Question

The following research questions shall be provided answers to:

(i)                 Do employees level of job satisfaction depended on organizational leadership style adopted by government?

(ii)              Does employees’ level of education influence the extent to which leadership style inspires and motivates them to perform their duty better?

(iii)            Does effective communication increase organization work performance?

1.4  Objectives of the Study

            The main of the study is to examine the evaluation of leadership style and their effect on employees work performance using I.C.E Asaba as a case study.

The specific objectives to be achieved are:

(i)                 To investigate if employees level of job satisfaction is depended on organization leadership style adopted by management.

(ii)              To examine if employees level of education influence the extent of which leadership style inspires and motivate them to perform their duty better.

(iii)            To ascertain if effective communication increases organizational work performance.

1.5    Research Hypotheses

The following research hypotheses shall be tested:

Ho1: Employees level of job satisfaction do not depend on organizational leadership style adopted by government.

Ha1: Employees level of job satisfaction depend on organizational leadership style adopted by government.

Ho2:  Employees level of education does not influence the extent    to which leadership style inspires and motivate them to perform their duties better.

Ha2:  Employees level of education influence the extent of which   leadership style inspires and motivates them to perform their duty better.

Ho3:  Effective communication does not increase organization        work performance.

Ha3:  Effective communication increases organization work performance.

1.6   Scope of the Study

            The aim of research is to evaluate the role of leadership style and their effect on employee performance. Despite the seemingly broad scope off the study stated above, the researcher has chosen to limit the study of institute of continuing education Asaba.

1.7       Limitations of the Study

            The major limitation of this study is heavy reliance on primary data since secondary data are not available to effective capture the topic under study. The perception of the respondents from the data for the analysis.

            Secondly, lack of finance coupled with the tag within which the study has to be completed underscores the choice of I.C.E Asaba.

1.8         Significance of the Study

            The research is design to examine the extent to which leadership can go in eliciting optimum performance of the employees. The field of management today has been so devoted to changes and progress. Consequently, many organizations are now aware that people need to be well directed, managed and motivated in order to get the best out of them.

            Ordinarily, many people find work to be too unpleasant and will do anything possible to avoid it. The significance of the study therefore, is to highlight the importance of properly directing, controlling, inducing and inspiring employees to achieve desired result.

            Organization must have managers who can play the figure head role, the interpersonal relationship was well as the potentials power to define the guidelines to follow, allocate resources and stimulates employees to obtain high business objective.

1.9          Definition of Terms

For effective and understanding of the content of this study, the following important terms have been defined.

(i)                 Lead: Means to go with or in front of a group to show the way or make them go in the right direction.

(ii)              Leader: This is an individual who is to exert influence over other people to help achieve group or organization goals.

(iii)            Leadership: This is the process by which an individual exert influence over the people, inspires, motivates and direct their activities to help group or organizational goals.

You either get what you want or your money back. T&C Apply

Talk to us right now: (+234)906-451-7926 (Call/WhatsApp)

---