Study regarding the leadership styles practiced in catalan smes during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This paper's aim is to study the leadership styles practiced in Catalan SMEs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research focuses on three leadership styles (autocratic/transactional, democratic/transformational and laissez-faire/liberal) and how these styles are influenced by Hofeste's cultural dimension and other variables such as the SMEs' maturity level and the respondents' gender. Moreover, our paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon the Catalan business environment, discussing the government restrictions and aid measures. The research has been conducted in an empirical way, on a sample of 164 SMEs from Catalonia, Spain. Our results have shown that most of the respondents from this sample employ a democratic/transformational leadership style and this style is influenced in a direct and positive way by the company's maturity and, at the same time, we found no significant correlation between the leadership style and the respondents' gender.