Effects of job experience, career stage, and hierarchy on leadership style.

Abstract

This present paper assesses the impact of age, career stage, and hierarchy of employees on their leadership styles. Data were collected from 324 employees of different business organisations in India. Organisations included were steel manufacturers industry, dredging corporations, airlines, real estate, banks, R&D, telecom, and the information technology firms. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was used to measure the leadership styles. Results revealed that transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles of employees differ significantly on job experience, career stage, and hierarchy. It was observed that the less experienced employees have high mean scores on transformational leadership style, and highly experienced employees have high mean scores on laissez-faire leadership style.

**********

Leadership is the quality to achieve desired results by giving a proper direction to the organisation. History has witnessed several theories for analysing leadership effectiveness. The first theory which evolved in the nineteenth century was called the Great Man's theory. According to this theory, great leaders are born, not made. Later, with the advent of modem social science, leadership researchers started searching for traits associated with leadership effectiveness. According to the trait theory, leaders were believed to possess traits such as self-confidence, intelligence, dependability, fairness, extroversion, enthusiasm, and good appearance. In this context, it can be mentioned that a leader learns with age and experience and the position he holds matters in influencing others.

Effective leaders build a working team with friendly and cooperative atmosphere through encouragement. They are normally found to spend most of their time in planning what is to be done, providing necessary materials, and initiating future action. A leader' s role in achieving organisational goal largely depends on his experiences and willingness to perform better. They are the potent sources of managerial rents and hence sustain competitive advantage (Avolio, 1999; Lado, Boyd & Wright, 1992; Rowe, 2001). The leadership style affects every aspect of organisation. There are several leadership styles that have been studied by the researchers in the context of organisational effectiveness. In this study, some of the popularly known leadership styles are discussed.

Transformational Leadership Style

Transformational leaders motivate followers to do more than what they are expected to do. They broaden and change the interest of their followers, and generate awareness and acceptance of the purpose and mission of the group. Transformational leadership consists of four factors: charisma or idealised influence, inspirational leadership or motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualised consideration. Transformational leaders strive to raise their awareness of what is good for the whole group by taking proactive measures. Followers are motivated to perform tasks beyond their own expectations. Idealised influence is directed when leaders are the role models for their followers. Inspirational motivation is displayed when transformational leaders behave in ways that motivate and inspire those around them by providing meaning and challenges to their followers' work. Intellectual stimulation is displayed when transformational leaders stimulate their followers' effort to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions, reframing problems, and approaching old situations in new ways. Individualised consideration is practised when new learning opportunities are created with a supportive climate (Bass, 1998).

Transactional Leadership Style

Transactional leadership occurs when the leader rewards or disciplines the follower depending on the adequacy of the follower's performance and on contingent reinforcement, either positive Contingent Reward (CR) or the more negative, active management-by-exception, and passive management-by-exception (Bass, 1998). With CR, the leader assigns or gets agreement on what needs to be done and promises rewards or actually rewards in exchange for satisfactorily carrying out the assignment (Bass, 1998).

In active management-by-exception, the leader arranges to actively monitor deviances from standards, mistakes and errors in the follower's assignments and takes corrective action as necessary. In passive management-by-exception, the leader waits passively for deviances, mistakes and errors to occur and then takes corrective action (Bass, 1998). Transactional leaders seek compliance from the followers. The outcomes of the interactions are clearly stated. In fact, transactional leadership is the basis for developing transformational leadership.

Laissez-faire Leadership Style

Laissez-faire leadership is the avoidance or absence of leadership and is the most inactive as well as most ineffective among all other styles of leadership (Bass, 1998). This type of leader displays an absence of behaviour, where decisions are not made, actions are delayed, and authority is not utilised.

Job Experience, Career Stage, Hierarchy, and Leadership Style

This is a general assumption that age and experience make certain differences in the working styles of individuals. So the leadership styles also get affected by age, experience, and position. A good leader must have good relationship with the employees. With job experience, a person learns many things that are reflected in his behaviour. One learns how to handle the difficult situations and develop relationships with others only through experiences. Securing commitment and retaining experienced employees are big challenges firms are facing today (Davenport, 1999). Young people in today's workforce are often portrayed as wanting very different things from work than their senior counterparts (Conger, 1998). Findings suggest that there are different employment preferences for different individuals (Sparrow, 1996). Those organisations are successful in retaining employees and increasing their commitment, meet the individuals' need preferences better (Guest, 1998). So, with the assumption that age and experience will affect the leadership styles, this research question was asked: Will leadership styles differ based on job experience, career stage, and hierarchy of the employees?

Method

The sample consisted of 324 employees from various business organisations in India. Organisations included were manufacturers, dredging corporations, airlines, real estate, bankers, R&D, telecommunications, and the information technology firms. The participants were from top, middle, and junior level management. A total of 47.2 per cent employees belonged to the junior level, 50.3 per cent middle level, and 2.5 belonged to the top-level management. The average age of participants was 38 years.

A total of 21.6 per cent of participants were single while 78.4 per cent were married. The percentage of intermediates, graduates, postgraduates, and doctorates was 2.5, 55.2, 38.6 and 3.7 per cent respectively. The average duration of participants with their present employer was 8.3 years. On average respondents spent 12.7 years in their career at the time of the survey.

Measure

The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio, 1995) was used to measure the leadership styles. MLQ is a multidimensional scale consisting of 37 items and measures a broad range of leadership styles such as transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership. The transformational leadership style consisted of 21 items. Some of the items included in transformational leadership style were, for example, "talks optimistically about the future" and "spends time in teaching and coaching". The respondents were asked to rate their general opinion about their immediate boss on a five-point scale ranging from "to a very great extent (5)" to "not at all (1)". The Cronbach's alpha of this scale was .96.

Transactional leadership style consisted of 12 items. Some of the items in this scale included, "expresses his/her satisfaction when I do a good job", and "keeps track of my mistakes". The Cronbach' s alpha of this scale was .72. The laissez-faire leadership style consisted of four items. Items in the scale included, for example, "avoids making decisions". The Cronbach's alpha of this revised scale was .93.

The categorisation of age of the employees into groups was based on career-stage theory as described by Gruneberg (1976), and Kacmar and Ferris (1989). According to this theory, the older the employee, the higher is the satisfaction towards the job. If a person is satisfied, then there is a possibility that his leadership style will be more impressive. The categorisation of job experience of employees into groups was based on Maslow' s hierarchy of needs theory (1943). It said that there are five levels of need in a person's career, namely, physiological, security, belongingness, esteem, and self-actualisation needs. With increasing age, the needs of a person might vary. All these needs contribute to the development of leadership qualities. Thus, based on the present data the following job experience and career stages groups were formed for further analyses.

Test Administration

The authors approached the human resource departments of relevant organisations and sought permission to collect data. A total of 475 questionnaires were distributed but only 352 were returned. Out of 352 questionnaires, 28 had to be rejected because of missing data. The overall appropriate sample size was 324.

Results

To test whether leadership styles differ significantly based on job experience, analysis of variance (Anova) was performed. It was found that transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles differed significantly across the three groups (Table 1).

To test whether leadership styles differ significantly based on employees' career stage, Anova was performed. It was found that transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles differed significantly across the three age groups (Table 2).

To test further whether leadership styles differ significantly based on hierarchy, a 't' test was done. As the number at the top management level was small, the significance of difference was tested between the middle and junior levels. It was found that transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles differed significantly across the middle and junior levels of employees (Table 3).

Further descriptive analyses were done to compare the mean value. The descriptive analysis based on employees' experience indicates that the less experienced employees have high mean on transformational leadership and the high experienced employees have high mean score on laissez-faire leadership style (Table 4).

Further descriptive analysis based on employees' career stage showed that employees of middle and advanced career stage have higher mean value on all leadership styles than those of at an early career stage (Table 5).

Discussion

The present findings are consistent with other studies. It has been found that job experience matters a lot in influencing leadership styles. Athanasaw (2003) found that the length of service and educational attainment were identified as being significant factors influencing the leadership styles of the executives.

The impact of age and experience of employees on leadership styles have been found to be positive and significant. This indicates that the mindset of the older employees is different from that of the younger employees. Further, the workload differs at different career stages. So this might lead to different styles of leadership. The expectations of employees change with experience and this might be the reason that makes them perceive leadership differently.

It was also found that the less experienced employees have higher mean scores on transformational leadership. This finding indicates that employees at the junior level are more eager to adapt the characteristics of transformational leadership. Transformational leaders motivate followers to do more than what they are expected to do. They broaden and change the interest of their followers, and generate awareness and acceptance of the purpose and mission of the group.

They always think what is good for the whole group by taking proactive measures. It was observed that the highly experienced employees have high mean scores on laissez-faire leadership. Laissez-faire leadership displays an absence of behaviour, where decisions are not made, actions are delayed, and authority is not utilised. Here, it implies that in Indian organisations with the increasing age and experience some people avoid taking up challenging tasks and as a result they might develop certain characteristics of the laissez-faire leadership.

Further, it has been observed that generally those at the middle career stage are more productive. They have gained various experiences by this stage but have yet to attain certain goals. The present findings indicate that the mean score of employees at the advanced and middle career stage are high on all the leadership styles. These findings imply that with the advancement of career, the leadership styles change. Thus, these findings support the objective of the present study.

It is also to be noted that transactional leadership style did not differ significantly based on job experience, career stage, and hierarchy. Transactional leadership occurs when the leader rewards or disciplines the follower depending on the adequacy of the follower' s performance. Transactional leaders monitor deviances, mistakes, and errors in the follower's assignments and take corrective action as necessary. They seek compliance from the followers. It is basically based on give-and-take understandings. It seems that in Indian organisations this style has not much to do with the age, experience, and hierarchy.

Thus, it can be concluded that job experience, career stage, and the hierarchy level form the leadership styles of employees. It is interesting to note that depending on the needs and situations, leaders keep on changing their styles. A person learns many things in life and based on his experiences makes decisions. There is always scope for further learning for everybody at any stage.

This study has a limitation related to the population that was sampled. The population consisted of employees from various organisations, making claims of the homogeneity of the employees. So, the generalisation of the findings should be done with caution.

References

Athanasaw DL, 2003. "Leadership Styles as Perceived by Career Senior Service Executives", International Journal of Public Administration, Vol 26, pp 1205-1234.

Avolio BJ, 1999. Full Leadership Development: Building the Vital Forces in Organisations. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Bass BM, 1998. Transformational Leadership: Industrial, Military and Educational Impact. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bass BM and BJ Avolio, 1995. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (5x-short). CA: Mind Garden.

Conger JA, 1998. "How 'GenX' Managers Manage", Business and Strategy, Vol 10, pp 21-31.

Davenport T, 1999. Human Capital. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Gruneberg MM, 1976. Job Fulfilment: A Reader, New York: Wiley.

Guest DE, 1998. "Is the Psychological Contract Worth Taking Seriously?" Journal of Organisational Behavior, Vol 19, pp 649-664.

Kacmar KM and GR Ferris, 1989. "Theoretical and Methodological Considerations in the Age-job Fulfilment Relationship", Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 74, pp 201-207.

Lado AA, NC Boyd and P Wright, 1992. "A Competency-based Model of Sustainable Competitive Advantage: Towards a Conceptual Integration", Journal of Management, Vol 18, pp 77-91.

Maslow AH, 1943. "A Theory of Human Motivation", Psychological Review, Vol 50, pp 370-396.

Rowe WG, 2001. "Creating Wealth in Organisations: The Role of Strategic Leadership", Academy of Management Executive, Vol 15, pp 81-94.

Sparrow PR, 1996. "Transitions in the Psychological Contract: Some Evidence from the Banking Sector", Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 6, pp 75-92.

Vijai N Giri

Tirumala Santra

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India

Categorisation of Job Experience

Time Spent in       Group
Career (in years)

10 or less          Less Experienced
11-20               More Experienced
21-36               High Experienced

Categorisation of Career Stage

Age (in years)   Group

30 and below     Early Career Stage
31-45            Middle Career Stage
46-60            Advanced Career Stage

Table 1: Significance of Difference Based on
Employees' Job Experience

Leadership Styles       SS        MS      F      p

Transformational    3645.68   1822.84   7.21   .001
Transactional         66.97     33.48   0.78   .456
Laissez-faire        249.74    124.87   8.15   .001

Table 2: Significance of Difference Based on
Employees' Career Stage

Leadership Styles       SS       MS      F      p

Transformational    1813.19   906.59   3.50   0.03
Transactional        123.39    61.69   1.45   0.23
Laissez-faire        209.04   104.52   6.76   0.01

Table 3: Significance of Difference across
Hierarchy

Leadership          Position    Mean     SD    n      t   df    p
Styles

Transformational  Middle level  77.16  15.66  163  -2.60  314  .01
                  Junior level  81.83  16.51  153

Transactional     Middle level  36.93   5.99  163  -1.16  314  .24
                  Junior level  37.78   7.03  153

Laissez-faire     Middle level   6.83   4.39  163   2.56  314  .01
                  Junior level   5.69   3.43  153

Table 4: Descriptive Analysis Based on Employees' Experience

Leadership         Job Experience      n    Mean     SD
Styles

Transformational   Less Experienced    89   83.98   1.23
                   More Experienced   128   79.59   1.54
                   High Experienced   107   75.33   1.63

Transactional      Less Experienced    89   37.94   0.62
                   More Experienced   128   37.46   0.56
                   High Experienced   107   36.78   0.68

Laissez-faire      Less Experienced    89    4.93   0.24
                   More Experienced   128    6.54   0.39
                   High Experienced   107    7.14   0.41


Table 5: Descriptive Analysis Based on Employees' Career Stage

Leadership         Age Group                n    Mean     SD
Styles             (in years)

Transformational   Early Career Stage       83   12.30   1.35
                   Middle Career Stage     174   17.58   1.33
                   Advanced Career Stage    67   16.07   1.96

Transactional      Early Career Stage       83    6.21   0.68
                   Middle Career Stage     174    6.28   0.47
                   Advanced Career Stage    67    7.36   0.90

Laissez-faire      Early Career Stage       83    2.38   0.26
                   Middle Career Stage     174    4.49   0.34
                   Advanced Career Stage    67    3.89   0.47