THE NEXUS BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLE AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY TO THE STATE GOVERNMENT, JIGAWA

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eISSN : 2600-8971, Volume 1, Issue 1 (2018), PP 190-213 www.uniszajournals.com/apj

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THE NEXUS BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLE AND EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY TO THE STATE GOVERNMENT, JIGAWA

STATE, NIGERIA Mohammed Sani Abdullahi

Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Social and Management Sciences, Yusuf Maitama Sule University Kano State, Nigeria.

abdulmohdsani@gmail.com

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the nexus between leadership styles (transformational, transactional and Autocratic) and employees’ performance in the office of the secretary to the State Government, Jigawa state, Nigeria. To achieve the purpose, quantitative research approach and descriptive survey research design were used. The data were collected through questionnaire, the Analyses were done through Statistical package for social science (SPSS v. 21). The finding showed that from the mean score of the three leadership styles (Transformational, Transactional and Autocratic), transformational leadership style (6.311) had the largest mean score, followed by one of transactional leadership dimension Intellectual Stimulation (2.132), Moreover, Autocratic leadership style had the least mean score from all leadership styles dimension (.709). The finding also exposed that, Transformational leadership style predicted employee performance more than transactional and autocratic leadership styles when applying separately. On the other hand, applying the three leadership styles jointly would predict employees’ performance more than single use of leadership styles in SSG’s Office. Thus, it has been recommended that, SSG’s Office leaders should use other dimensions of transformational leadership style such as individual consideration, idealized influence, and intellectual stimulation to build mutual trust between leaders and subordinates, and act with integrity and encourage innovative thinking in order to enhance employee performance as well as to achieve the goals effectively and efficiently.

Key Words: Transformational, Transactional, Autocratic, Leadership Style, Employees & Performance

Introduction

Employee performance is a building block of an organization and factors which lay the foundation for high performance in an organization. Since every organization cannot progress by one or two individual’s effort, it is collective effort of all the members of the organization.

Performance is a major multidimensional construct aimed to achieve results and has a strong link to strategic goals of an organization (Isaac, 2000). Leaders at all levels have to put their efforts and make maximum use of their abilities which sometimes are produced under supervision or without it (Babatunde & Emem, 2015). Leadership is considered one of the main functions of management in achieving organizational objectives and maximizing productivity. Indeed, achieving organizational objectives is not possible or is very difficult

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The State Government, Jigawa State, Nigeria

without leadership. A large part of organizational failure in achieving productivity derives from its inefficient management and leadership style (Hijazi, Kasim & Daud, 2017).

Leadership style is not only to depend on the individual characteristics of leader, but also on the identity of situation in which leaders and subordinate communicates with each other (Aliakbari, 2010).

According to Mohiuddin (2017) there is a widely held belief that leadership is one of the factors that determines whether a group, an organization or even a nation will be successful. This is partly because a leader can have a strong influence on the behaviour and performance of group members. Leadership is therefore very important to the survival and effectiveness of organization’sperformance. As organisations grow and expectations about their performances increase, demand for good leadership tends to multiply. Leadership ability is a valuable skill and those who possess it reap high rewards. Therefore, from every indication, there seems to be a strong link between leadership style and performance of employees in an organization. Leadership is a social influence process in which the leader seeks the voluntary participation of subordinates in an effort to reach organization goals (Omolayo, 2000), a process whereby one person exert ssocial influence over other members of the group (Bamigboye, 2000), a process of influencing the activities of an individual or a group of individual towards goal achievement in given situations (Ogbonna, & Harris, 2000) and a relational concepts involving both the influencing agent and the person being influenced (Eze, 1995). Effective leadership is the extent to which a leader continually and progressively lead and directs his/her followers to the agreed destination as defined by the whole group.

Mohiuddin (2017) it is a well known fact that leadership plays a vital role in every organization. Nwokocha and Iheriohanma (2015) although, progress has been madein understanding leadership traits, however there are needs to realize that much were not known about these activities i.e. how can we effectively apply the leadership styles in organizations to enhance performance? Having known the benefits of managerial leadership, how can business organizations adopt it and how does it help the business organizations in achieving their corporate goals especially for attaining a desired level of workers’ performance? The only solution to these problems is the adopting of effective leadership styles which will boost performance in the organization. Therefore the study is to investigate the nexus between

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leadership style and employees performance in the office of the Secretary to the State Government, Jigawa State, Nigeria.

Statement of the Problem

In any given discipline, the success of a venture can be traced directly back to the vision and will of the leadership. Therefore, having effective leadership styles for the organization to retain competent employees is crucial to its survival (Bamigboye, 2000).

Performance of employees’ in organizations is very important to achieve organizational objectives, and it can be achieve through effective leadership, and as well leadership styles also play essential role for the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization in general and employees’ performance in particular. Therefore, it is logically understood that leadership styles would have significant relationship with employees’

performance, though the nature of relationship is not consistently the same across countries or organizations (Bass,1985). Thus effective leadership enables greater participation of the entire workforce, and can also influence both individual and organizational performance to achieve organizational goals (Naderi & Jadidi, 2014). For that reason, organizational goal achievement and failure is highly related with the quality of leadership.

Despite the effective leadership style toward employee performance still yet problems lingers the focused study area such as: poor innovation, low productivity, inability to meet performance targets, employee absenteeism, lack of initiative and creativity, lack of proactiveness and motivation. These problems happen due to lack of strategic interventions of specific leadership styles to the particular situations; this was predicted as the problem at hand. This problem was continuously affecting employee Performance. Therefore, this study intends to investigate the nexus between leadership styles and employee performance in the office of the Secretary to the State Government, Jigawa State, Nigeria.

Objectives of the Study

The general objective of this study is to investigate the nexus between leadership style and employee performance in the office of the Secretary to the State Government, Jigawa State, Nigeria, while the specific objectives are as follows:

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1. To examine the nexus between transformational leadership style and employee’s performance.

2. To determine the nexus between transactional leadership style and employee’s performance.

3. To identify the nexus between autocratic leadership style and employee’s performance.

Hypotheses of the Study The hypotheses of the study are as follows:

H₁: There is a significant and positive nexus between transformational leadership style and employee’s performance.

H₂: There is a significant and positive nexus between transactional leadership style and employee’s performance.

H₃: There is a significant and positive nexus between autocratic leadership style and employee’s performance.

Significant of the Study

This study has multifaceted significance that enable the office of the secretary to the State Government, Jigawa State, Nigeria to obtain information or input for future improvement in order to take corrective measures in the area of problems identified that are in line with the jurisdiction to SSG of Jigawa State, Nigeria and other institutions or organizations to know the nexus between leadership styles and employee performance, in order to develop mechanism to improve the employee and organization productivity, and this study enable the office of SSG Jigawa State, Nigeria and other institutions and organizations to know the most determinants of employee performance and the dimensions of leadership style.

This study serves as a guide to other state, institution, organization, researchers and students that intend to carryout similar research work.

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Literature Review Employee performance

Performance is defined as the value of the set of employee behaviours that contribute to the organization goal (Colquitt et al., 2011). Employee performance is defined as a motivational state of cognizance influenced by the factors of psychological meaningfulness, availability or readiness and security which are influenced by situational features of the job atmosphere (May et al., 2004; Macey & Schneider, 2008). From the initiation of globalization, the foremost confront for manager is to expertise different strategies to boost firm’s performance (Habib, Khurram & Idress, 2010). For the strength of an organization, job satisfaction plays a vital role which has significant effect on employee performance. And the word performance we used to pass on the individual aptitude to be inspired, stirring, pioneering and to determinant to achieving the goals on an organization (Walumbwa & Hartnell, 2011).

Leadership is associated with employee performance (Ogbonna & Harris 2000). The relationship between Leadership and performance is established considerable attention (Vigoda, 2007). The main aim of every organization is to enhance employee performance.

Howell, Merenda (1999) suggested that leadership play an imperative role in increasing job satisfaction as well as role play to achieve organization’s goal and employee’s acts. Firm mostly increase employee’s performance by giving empowerment to their team members (Ozaralli, 2002).

Leadership Style

Leadership has so many components, but this study restricted its self to only three components (Transformational, Transactional and Autocratic style) and they served as the dimension of the study.

1. Transformational Leadership Style

Transformational leadership was first conceptualized by James Mac Gregor Burns in 1978.

He was a presidential biographer and a leadership expert who focused mainly on the improvement of management principles and procedures (Walumbwa & Hartnell, 2011). He claimed that transformational leadership is observed when leaders encouraged followers to boost the level of their morale, motivation, beliefs, perceptions, and coalition with the

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objectives of the organization. Burns stresses further that a transformational leader needs to have a solid understanding of the necessary goals to be successful and be articulate in explaining those goals and the method through which they are to be achieved (Walumbwa &

Hartnell, 2011). Transformational leadership is a leadership style that motivates followers by appealing to higher ideals and moral values which can inspire employees to perform beyond expectations and transform both the individual and the organizations (Bass, 1985 cited in Rochelle, 2012).

2. Transactional Leadership Style

The transactional leadership style was pioneered by Burns (1978). He described the transactional leadership as exchange of the relationship between the leader and the subordinates (Sabir, Sohail & Khan, 2011). Transactional leadership involves an exchange process that results in follower compliance with leader request but not likely to generate enthusiasm and commitment to a task objective. The leader focuses on having internal actors to perform the tasks required for the organization to reach its desired goals (Boehnke, Bontis

& Distefano, 2003; Obiwuru et al., 2011). Jung (2001) cited in Paracha, Qamar, Mirza, Hassan and Waqas (2012) defined transactional leadership as the leader’s attitude towards identification of followers’ needs and aspirations, and clearly demonstrates the ways to fulfil these needs in exchange of performance of followers.

3. Autocratic Leadership Style

This leadership style is often classified as the classical approach (Swarup, 2013). It is a style of leadership where a manager is the most powerful entity, the primary decision maker and authority (Gordon, 2013).This style of leadership is based on the traditional premise that leaders are good managers who direct and control their people. Those followers (employees) are obedient subordinates who follow orders (Alkahtani, Abu-Jarad, Sulaiman & Nikbin, 2011). This position is supported by Gordon (2013) that employees under autocratic leadership style are expected to follow the orders of their manager even if they do not agree or do not receive any explanation. She argued that in order to motivate employees, managers using autocratic leadership styles often employ a set of rewards and punishments that are highly structured. Zervas and David (2013) posit that an autocratic leader accomplishes ends through imparting a clear, compelling vision, sees to it that the vision is built into strategic

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planning, and that it guides action throughout the organization. They stress that autocratic leaders provide clear directions, monitor progress closely, and convince subordinates of the position of management.

Empirical Review of Related Literature

Naile and Salesho (2014) conducted a research on the role of leadership in employee motivation in South Africa. Autocratic and transformational style served as the proxies of leadership that stand as the independent variable of the study, while employee motivation was the dependent variable. Questionnaire was used as the method of data collection of the study, while Descriptive statistic, percentage & frequency (SPSS) was used to test the hypothesis.

The study reveals that there was strong relationship between transformational leadership behaviours and commitment (effective 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 motivates staff. While it can be argued that transformational leadership cannot raise job satisfaction, however the commitment of teachers to their job satisfaction and ultimately improve the school’s academic performance.

The relationship between leadership style and employee commitment in private higher education institutions at Addis Ababa city In Ethiopia was a research conducted by Teshome (2013).Transactional, transformational, and laisseze-faire stands as the dimension of leadership style which was the independent variable and employee commitment was the dependent variable of the study, where effective, continuance, and normative stand as its proxies. Questionnaire, journals and library books were used as the method of data collection.

The findings revealed that transformational leadership style has significant and positive correlation with affective and continuance employee commitment while transactional style with normative and laisseze-faire style was found to be significantly and negatively associated with employees affective commitment.

Jalal-Edden (2015) carries out a research an assessment of leadership style and employee performance in SMEs in Yola Adamawa state, Nigeria. The researcher used questionnaire to collect data and chi-square was employed to test the data of the study. The Result was presented using both descriptive and inferential statistics. It was evident that the predominant type of leadership in the enterprises studied is participative democracy, and that

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leadership styles have effect on the performance of employee. This was supported by the fact that results of the computed chi square test (24.55 and 17.39) for the first and second hypotheses (at P<0.05. df=95) are greater than the tabulated (0.078 and 0.136) (at p< 0.05, df=95).

Paracha et al. (2012) investigate the Impact of leadership styles (transformational and transactional) on employee performance and mediating role of job satisfaction: private schools in Pakistan. The researchers make use of transactional and transformational leadership style as the determinant of the independent variable (leadership style) and a mediating variable (job satisfaction) and the dependent variable (employee performance).the method of data collection was through questionnaire, correlation with the help of SPSS was used to test the hypothesis under the study. The study finding indicates transactional and transformational both are significantly positive associated with employee performance.

However, transactional was more significant than transformational. Another important discovery made was there is no mediating role of job satisfaction between transactional leadership. But it mediates with transformational leadership and employee performance.

Mohiuddin (2017) identified the Influence of leadership style on employee performance: evidence from literature in Pakistan. The researcher uses past literature to collect data, Base on the paper, it has been found that all the dimension of leadership styles has a crucial relationship or effect with employee as well as organizational performance.

Ahmad et al. (2014) evaluate the Linkage between leadership styles and employee performance in Pakistan. Autocratic, democratic, and participative style was used as the proxies of leadership; Fiedler leadership contingency model theory was also used in the study. Data was collected through secondary source: report writing, article, magazines, and books. The study concluded that the autocratic leadership is useful in the short term;

democratic leadership is useful in all time horizons, and participative is most useful in long term and effect on employee is positive.

Garg and Ramjee (2013) identified the relationship between leadership styles and employee commitments at a parastatals company in South Africa. The researcher used transactional, transformational, and laissez-faire as the proxies of leadership i.e. the independent variable, and normative, affective, and continuance as the proxies of the dependent variable. Trait, behavioural, and situational theory were used in the study; the method of data collection was questionnaire. The Result revealed a weak positive yet

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significant relationship between transformational leadership and effective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment. Transactional leadership had a weak but significant positive correlation with normative commitment, and Laisseze-faire results indicated a weak negative yet significant correlation to affective commitment and normative commitment.

Hijazi et al. (2017) investigate Leadership styles and their relationship with the private university employees’ job satisfaction in United Arab Emirates, where they used transformational and transactional style as the dimension of leadership which was the independent variable and employee job satisfaction as the dependent variable of the study.

They used questionnaire as the method of data collection. The findings of the study indicate that there was positive and significant relationship between transformational style and employee job satisfaction. However, the relationship between transactional style and job satisfaction was observed to be negative and significant.

Shafie et al. (2013) examined the relationship between leadership style and employee performance in Iran. Questionnaire was used to collect data while correlation through SPSS software was used to test the hypothesis under the study. The result shows that transformational leadership and pragmatic leadership style has a significant and positive relationship with employee performance, while laisseze-faire leadership style has a negative relationship with employee performance.

Muhammad et al. (2014) examine the relationship between leadership styles and employees’ performance in organizations (a study of selected business organizations in federal capital territory Abuja in Nigeria where leadership style was the independent variable, and employee performance was the dependent variable of the study. Situational, path goal, personality, and contingency theory were used under the study. The researchers makes used of questionnaire as the method of data collection, where correlation and regression analysis with the help of SPSS were used to test the hypothesis. It was found that there was a significant relationship between leadership styles and employee performance in an organization.

Babatunde and Emem (2015) investigate a study on the impact of leadership style on employee’s performance in an organization in Nigeria. The researchers used secondary source of data: leaflet, journals, and books, the independent variable of the study was leadership styles, and the dependent variable of the study was employee performance. The

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study revealed that there is significant relationship between leadership style and employee performance in the attainment of organization goals and objectives.

The impact of leadership styles on employees’ performance in telecom engineering companies was a research conducted by Sougui et al. (2016) in Malaysia and Chad, where the researchers makes used of transactional, transformational, servant, and laissez-faire as the dimension of the independent variable which was leadership style, and mediating variable of job satisfaction, and employee performance the dependent variable. Transformational and transactional theories were used in the study. They used questionnaire to collect data where SEM and regression through SPSS were used to analyze the data. It was found that all leadership styles have an effect (positive and negative) on the employee’s motivation, satisfaction and performance.

Nwokocha & iheriohanma (2015) investigate the Nexus between leadership styles, employee retention and performance in organizations in Nigeria. Secondary source of data was used to collect data. The study proposed that organizations in Nigeria should adopt leadership styles that will galvanize the organizational and managerial and leadership process. Meaning that the factors that influence leadership style play important role on employee relation and performance in organization.

Linjuan (2010) conduct a study on measuring the impact of leadership style and employee empowerment on perceived organizational reputation in Miami. Leadership style was the independent variable and transactional style served as the determinant of leadership style while employee empowerment was the dependent variable of the study. Transactional theory was used and the researcher used questionnaire to collect data whereas regression (SPSS), SEM, and Chi-square were used to test the hypothesis of the study. The result shows that transactional leadership positively influences the employee performance of organization through empowering employees.

Iqbal et al. (2015) evaluates the effect of leadership styles on employee performance in Pakistan. Autocratic, democratic, and participative served as the determinant of independent variable which was the leadership style and employee performance was the dependent variable of the study. They used Fielder’s contingency theory, secondary source of data: newspaper, magazine, journal, and previous research were used to collect data. The study concluded that the autocratic leadership is useful in the short term, and democratic leadership is useful in all time horizons and participative leadership is most useful in long

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term and effect on employees is positive. Therefore, the result shows that all the proxies of the independent variable have significant effect on employee performance.

Afshinpour (2014) examine Leadership styles and employee satisfaction: a correlation study in U.S.A. the researcher used transformational, transactional, autocratic, charismatic and situational as the determinant of the independent variable (leadership styles) and dependent variable (employee satisfaction). Questionnaire was used to collect data, while correlation and one way ANOVA (SPSS) was used to test the hypothesis of the study. The result indicates that each of the five leadership styles has a positive correlation with employee satisfaction. Suggesting that the situational style may be the most appropriate styles for leaders in some companies.

Framework of the Study

Research framework is defined as a framework that joint together theories and ideas to helps researchers recognize problems, develop questions and search for relevant literature (Dillman, 1991). The framework of this study was prepared based on the literature review and objectives of the study. The model included four variables, three of which were independent variables (Transactional, Transformational, Transactional and Autocratic leadership style) and the last one make up the dependent variable, namely Employee performance. Conceivably, these three variables influence employee performance has been presented in the hypotheses developed above. Furthermore, the proposed framework that incorporates the variables to be studied is illustrated in Figure.1.

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Figure 1: Conceptual Model

The review of the literature on the status of leadership styles and employees’

performance has been analyzed in order to see the relationship between the leadership styles and employees’ performance. The discussion provides an important framework for this study in term of the variables that are used. Studies conducted on the relationship between leadership styles and employees’ performance revealed that leadership styles affect employees’ performance and correlate each other. Employees are the most important assets in organizations, which without, the goals and objectives may not be attained. Leadership styles can play in achieving organizational goal and increase employees’ performance as well as organizational performance. To this end, this study tries to examine the link between independent (Transformational leadership, Transactional leadership and Autocratic leadership) and dependent (Employee Performance) variables.

Research Methodology

Descriptive research design was used as the research design of the study and target population of the study is based on the employees of SSG office of Jigawa State, Nigeria. The population of the study consists of 120 employees of the focused study in question. The required sample size was 92 out of the stated population of the study and the sample size was

Employee Performance Leadership

Style

Transformational Leadership

Transactional Leadership

Autocratic Leadership

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obtained using krejcei and Morgan 1970 table of sample size determination. Probability sampling technique (Simple Random Sampling) was used in this study and the research instruments used in this study was purely questionnaire (primary data) given the size of the population. The questionnaire measure the key variables of the research, and a structured questionnaires with close-ended type are to be used for this research work with 1-5 Likert scale which consist of strongly disagree to strongly agree to answer the research questions, and also it is used to measure the responses of the respondents of this study. This study used descriptive and inferential statistics. First, descriptive statistics are to be conducted using frequency and percentages, for the demographic data of the study. Secondly, this study employed multiple regression analysis (Inferential Statistic) in order to test the hypothesized model of the study.

Result and Discussion

This chapter presents the analysis and interpretation of the data gathered by questionnaire, and provide discussion base on the findings of the study. In accordance the descriptive analysis begins with demographic profle of the focused respondents of the study, followed by reliability test of the data, and it presents the regression analysis that test the hypotheses of the study.

Demographic Profile

Table 1: Descriptive Profile of the Respondents Demographic

Variables

Category Frequency Percentage (%)

Gender

Male Female

64 26

71.1 28.9

Age 18-24 13 14.4

25-34 6 6.7

35-44 9 10.0

45-54 55-64 65-above

17 34 11

18.9 37.8 12.2

Total 90 100

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Qualification SSCE/GCE

OND/NCE

3 5

3.3 5.6

B.Sc/HND 9 10.0

Masters 20 22.2

PhD 39 43.3

Others Total

14 90

15.6 100

Period in service Below 1 year 7 7.8

1-3 years 7 7.8

4-6 years 7-10 years 11-14 years 15 years- above Total

10 16 36 14 90

11.1 17.8 40.0 15.6 100 Post in office

Director 11 12.2

Assistant director 25 27.8

Zonal inspector 35 38.9

Senior staff Junior staff SSG Total

12 6 1 90

13.3 6.7 1.1 100

Source: Field Survey, Generated from SPSS Version 21

According to the result in Table 1 above, the numbers of female respondents and male respondents which participated in this research are 64 (71.1%) of male and 26 (28.9%) of female among the respondents. The age group of the respondents is between 18 to 24 years old are 13 respondents amounted to (14.4%). Then 25 to 34 years old with 6 respondents (6.7%), age group between 35 to 44 years old are 9 respondents amounted to (10.0%), at the same time age group between 45 to 55 years old are 17 respondents (18.9%), and followed by age group between 55 to 64 years old are 34 respondents (37.8%). Lastly, age range between 65 and above years amounted to 11 respondents (12.2%).

The Table 1 above shows the level of education of the respondents. 3 respondents are secondary school holders (3.3%), 5 respondents are Diploma/NCE holders (5.6%), 9

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respondents are BSc./HND holders (10.0%), 20 respondents are masters holders (22.2%), while 39 respondents are PhD holders (43.3%).

Based on the respondents that participated in this research, their service length between 1 to 3 years, 4 to 6 years, 7 to 10 years, 11 to 14 years and 15 years and above as according to the table 4.1 shows that 7 respondents having 1 to 3 years working experiences which are 7.8 % out of 100%, followed by range 4 to 6 years, 10 respondents which are 11.1%, then the range of 7 to 10 years consist of 16 respondents (17.8%), 11 to 14 years consist 36 respondents (40.0%) and lastly 14 respondent having service length of 15 years and above (15.6%).

The post of the respondents in Table 1 indicates that 11 respondents are directors (12.2%), 25 respondents are assistant directors (27.8%), 35 respondents are zonal inspectors (38.9%), 12 respondents are senior staff (13.3%), 6 respondents are junior staff (6.7%).

Reliability Test

In this section, the pilot study was conducted through a questionnaire whereby one hundred (100) respondents were used for the pilot test out of the scope and population of the study.

The reliability analysis was conducted in order to measure both consistency and internal stability of data whereby Cronbach’s Alpha was employed in this study to test the internal consistency reliability.

Table 2: Summary of Reliability Test

Variables Number of Items Cronbach Alpha

Transactional Leadership 6 0.710

Transformational Leadership 5 0.833

Autocratic Leadership 5 0.836

Employee Performance 5 0.817

Source: Generated from SPSS Version, 21

The findings of the pilot study was presented in Table 2 base on each construct of the study comprising of the transformational, transactional, and autocratic leadership style.

Cronbach alpha can be judged by some rules , alpha coefficient which is greater than 0.90 is considered as excellent, more than 0.80 is categorized as good, while greater than 0.70 is acceptable, greater than 0.6 is questionable, greater than 0.5 is poor, and finally less than 0.5

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is generally unacceptable (John & Reve, 1982). The reliability of 0.60 can be considered as average coefficient, whereas 0.70 could be regarded as high reliability coefficient (Hair, Black, Anderson & Tatham, 2006; Nunnally, 1978, Sekaran & Bougie, 2010; Sekaran, 2003).

Therefore, pilot study Cronbach’s Alpha with 0.70 above is considered as the acceptable cut- off point. Base on such declaration, the result of the reliability test in Table 1 show that the Cronbach alpha for the variable under study reached the acceptable reliability coefficient, indicating that the study data is recommended for further analysis.

Regression Result

Regression analysis provides an avenue of neutrality of assessing the degree and character between independent variables and dependent variable (Sekaran & Bougie, 2010; Hair, Money, Samoel & Page, 2007; Field, 2009). The regression coefficient use to show the relative importance of each of the independent variables in the prediction of the dependent variable. If the independent variables are collectively regressed against the dependent variable to explain the variance in it, the size of each regression coefficient will show how much an increase in one unit in the independent variable would affect the dependent variable taking into consideration all other variable inserted into multiples coefficient (Sekaran &

Bougie, 2010).

Therefore, to examine the relationship between leadership style and Employee performance, the present study conducted a regression analysis. Three (3) predicting variables including transactional, transformation and autocratic were examine to see their nexus with employee performance, table 3 present regression analysis of the variables under study.

Table 3: Summary of Regression Result

Model Unstandardized

Coefficients

Standardized Coefficients

t Sig.

B Std. Error Beta

(Constant) 2.890 2.727 1.060 0.292

Transf. 0.557 0.088 0.550 6.311 0.000

Trans. 0.204 0.096 0.186 2.132 0.036

Autocr. 0.052 0.074 0.060 0.706 0.480

R R² Adj. R² F. Change Sig.

0.623^a 0.388 0.366 28.0251 0.000

Dependent Variable: Employee Performance.

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The results of model summary presented in Table 3 shows a significant R=0.623, this implies that multiple correlation coefficients between the predictors and the criterion was 62%, while R² of 0.388 implies that predicting variables (Transformational, Transactional and Autocratic leadership style) under the study were able to account or explain 38.8%

variance in the dependent variable (customer satisfaction), while the remaining 61.2% was not captured by this study. Furthermore, Cohen and Cohen (1988) classify the R² into three (3) categories: 0.02 as weak, 0.13 as moderate and 0.26 as substantial, in view of this classification the present study R² is considered moderate. The significant F-test of (28.0251, p<0.000) signifies that the overall significant prediction of independent variables to the dependent variable, this further implies that, p-value of 0.000 has a model fitness in regressing the nexus between leadership style on employee performance in the office of the Secretary to the State Government, Jigawa State, Nigeria.

Hypothesis 1

This section presents the test results of the alternative hypothesis indicating that there is a significant and positive nexus between transformational leadership and employee performance. The regression coefficient of the model is positive (β = 0.557, t = 6.311, p<0.000). This indicates a significant and positive nexus between transformational leadership on employee performance in the office SSG, Jigawa State, Nigeria. So the hypothesis 1 was supported. Base on the study result, the study is consistent with the studies of ( Naile &

Salesho, 2014; Teshome, 2013; Paracha et al., 2012; Mohiuddin, 2017; Garg & Ramjee, 2013; Hijazi et al., 2017; shafie et al., 2013 & Linjuan, 2010) which found that transformational leadership has significant nexus with employee performance. This implies that if transformational leadership is applied in the office of SSG of Jigawa State, Nigeria then employees will perform better.

Hypothesis 2

Hypothesis 2 speltout that there is a significant and positive nexus between transactional leadership and employee performance. The regression coefficient result is (β = 0.204, t = 2.132, p<0.036). This indicates a significant and positive nexus between transactional leadership on employee performance in the office SSG, Jigawa State, Nigeria. So the

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hypothesis 2 was supported. This finding is in line with previous studies of (Teshome, 2013;

Paracha et al., 2012; Mohiuddin, 2012; Garg & Ramjee, 2013 & AfshinPour, 2014) which found that transactional leadership has significant and positive nexus with employee performance. This implies that if transactional leadership is applied in the office of SSG of Jigawa State, Nigeria it will automatically encourage the employee to perform better.

Hypothesis 3

Hypothesis 3 indicate that there is significant positive nexus between autocratic leadership and employee performance. The regression coefficient result is (β = 0.052, t = 0.706, p>0.480). This implies that, there is negative and insignificant nexus between autocratic leadership and employee performance in the office of SSG, Jigawa State, Nigeria. So hypothesis 3 was not supported. Therefore, the study result is on same view with the following studies (Ahmad et al., 2014; Iqbal et al., 2015 & Afshin pour, 2014. This implied that if autocratic leadership is applied in the in the office of SSG of Jigawa State, Nigeria it will affect the performance of its employees negatively. Therefore, it clearly shows that the employees are not motivated with autocratic leadership system toward performance achievement, meaning that autocratic leadership does not bring about employees performance and such system should be avoided in order to achieve employees’ performance in the focused study area.

Conclusion and Recommendations

1. Based on the major findings of the study, the following conclusions were drawn The finding depicted that transformational leadership style was the dominant leadership style in the office of SSG of Jigawa State, Nigeria. However, literature informs that transactional leadership is critical for improvement of organizational goals. Hence, there is a need to maintain the ongoing positive impact of the transactional leadership style, while seeking a mechanism for shifting towards transformational leadership style which ultimately will ensure success in the office or any organizational setting. The finding of this study revealed transformational and transactional leadership styles had a positive and significant nexus with employees’ performances. But the nexus between autocratic leadership style and employees’

performance was weak, negative and statistically insignificant. From this, one can conclude

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that in the office of SSG of Jigawa State, Nigeria employees’ performance assumed to be enhanced when leaders’ employed transformational and transactional leadership styles. Thus, there is a need to uphold the concurring transformational leadership style accompanied by transactional leadership style both of which accounted significant and positive change in the performance of employees. The finding showed that the change in employee performance was more due to transformational leadership style than transactional leadership style while applying separately. From this, one can concluded that when applying leadership styles separately employees’ performance is influenced positively to a better extent in the office of SSG of Jigawa State, Nigeria.

2. Based on the findings and conclusions of the study, the following recommendations are suggested

In the SSG’s Office, transformational leadership style was the dominant leadership style.

Now a day, the application of transformational leadership style contribution is not that much for the success of organization. Therefore, SSG’s office leaders are recommended to use other dimensions of transformational leadership style such as individual consideration, idealized influence, and intellectual stimulation to build mutual trust between leaders and subordinates, and act with integrity and encourage innovative thinking in order to enhance employee’s performance as well as to achieve the goals effectively and efficiently.

Both transformational and transactional leadership styles have shown positive relationship with employees’ performance. Thus, SSG’s office are should maintain and improve these positive relationships through building high level of trust and confidence, developing strong sense of loyalty to employees, inspiring shared vision by building capacity of leaders’ and subordinates, organizing management development programs and by creating mutual discussion with employees.

Suggestions for Future Researcher

Finally, the researcher recommends further researcher in the area with broader scope and depth including other variables such as leaders’ leadership skill, employees’ commitment, job satisfaction, etc that this study never addressed.

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