The Influence of Leadership Styles on Employees ’ Job Satisfaction in Public Sector Organizations in Malaysia

Abstract

Leadership is a process influence between leaders and subordinates where a leader attempts to influence the behaviour of subordinates to achieve the organizational goals. Organizational success in achieving its goals and objectives depends on the leaders of the organization and their leadership styles. By adopting the appropriate leadership styles, leaders can affect employee job satisfaction, commitment and productivity. Two hundred Malaysian executives working in public sectors voluntarily participated in this study. Two types of leadership styles, namely, transactional and transformational were found to have direct relationships with employees’ job satisfaction. The results showed that transformational leadership style has a stronger relationship with job satisfaction. This implies that transformational leadership is deemed suitable for managing government organizations. Implications of the findings were discussed further.