Performance of Employees and Leadership Style in Parastatals in Transport Sector

Abstract

The objective of the study aimed to examine the connection between a leader's style and the performance of his or her transport industry. The majority of parastatals in Zimbabwe perform poorly. The management methods employed by these parastatals may be a contributing cause in their subpar performance. Performance is a relative concept defined in terms of some referent employing a complex set of time-based measurements of generating future results. Data was collected through administering a Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) for the leadership style and analysis of the employee performance appraisal records of the 178 respondents (34 managers and 144 raters/subordinates) in the selected parastatals. The data was analysed using the statistical package SPSS version 20. It was found that transformational and transactional leadership styles were the two most prevalent ones used in this industry. Employee performance was positively connected with both leadership philosophies, but the correlation for transactional leadership was substantially larger. This suggests that a key factor in the effectiveness of parastatals is their leadership styles.