CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Efficient and effective organization
performance and productivity is the core target and interest of any
business establishment. The efficiency and achievement of any
organizational goal must be anchored on certain persons and
responsibilities delegated to persons for the purpose of concentration
and division of labour benefit. Every organisation, like every team
requires leadership. Leadership allows managers to affect employee
behaviour in the organisation. Thus, motivated employees are one of the
most important results of effective leadership; this mostly translates
to higher output for the organization. Leadership is critical to forming
and implementing strategy and without it, good strategy does not
happen. Good leadership is important for the success of any
organization, good leadership is more than just important—it is
absolutely critical to the organisation’s success. Achieving
organisational goals, however, is not enough to keep employees motivated
but helping employees accomplish their own personal and career goals is
an important part of their motivation, this is the point Leadership
becomes key.. One of the most important of these variables is leadership
behavior of supervisors for leadership is seen as the behavior of
impressing people in many studies.
Leadership is the process through which
an individual tries to influence another individual or a group of
individuals to accomplish a goal. Leadership is valued in our culture,
especially when it helps to achieve goals that are beneficial to the
population, such as the enactment of effective preventive health
policies. An individual with leadership qualities can also improve an
organization and the individuals in it, whether it be a teacher who
works to get better teaching materials and after school programs or an
employee who develops new ideas and products and influences others to
invest in them.
The behavior of employees in
organizational life and their relationship with their jobs are affected
by a lot of variables. One of the most important of these variables is
leadership behavior of supervisors for leadership is seen as the
behavior of impressing people in many studies. It has also become clear
that organizational commitment has important implications for employees
and organizations through various studies by researchers. Bennett and
Durkin (2000) stated that the negative effects associated with a lack of
employee commitment include absenteeism and turnover.
Employees are bent on acting in such
manner as they have seen their boss or superior imply. The activities of
employee is the major determinant of performance and output because an
improved attitude towards work and toward one responsibility and
assignment will transform into the person’s ability to either perform
effectively or not.
It could be observed that leadership and
management envisages deeply into what the organization can achieve if
the quality of recognition is accorded to them. Leadership has been
propounded to include the sources of influence that are built into a
position in an organizational hierarchy. These include organizationally
sanctioned rewards, and punishments, authority, as well as referent and
expert power katz and kahn 1966. It could be seen however, that
subordinates within the organization, through not all seem to enjoy the
influence that exists all over and above the organization. Leadership is
very essential organization and greatly influences the whole
organization because achievements and results occur corollary to the
traits being projected by the leader.
In general terms the acts of controlling
other people consists uncertainty reduction ,which entails making the
kind of choice that permits the organization to proceed towards its
objective despite various kinds of internal and external variables. The
effectiveness of leadership has some characteristics, which include
forceful threats, a complete assertion of authority to the subordinates,
and a derived, and situational responsibility. Note that in the society
today, not only the presence of rewards (positive and negative), or the
incentive appraisal could induce productivity but the feeling of
belongingness. Improper leadership qualities within the organization
have a negative impact on the subordinates as well as the achievement of
the organizational objective. An organization that has growth and
forward looking has a good leadership and vis a vis a bad or
deteriorating organization has a bad leadership. Leadership is always
related to the situation. There is a growing awareness that is a
continuous interaction between the factors presents in any given
situation, including for example, the personal characteristics of the
leader, the tasks, the environment, the technology, the attitudes,
motivation and behaviour of the followers and so on.
Hence, in order to be effective, it is
critical for managers to influence their subordinates, peers, and
superiors to assist and support their proposals, plans, and to motivate
them to carry out with their decisions Blickle, (2003). Organization
commitment can also increase the creativity in the organizations Sousa
& Coelho, (2011). However, organizational commitment is one of
strong determinant of success towards employees for the better
performance of the organization, which is highlighted various times in
the past literature Chew & Chan, (2008) Das, (2002). The behavioral
status of the employees in any company is occasioned and influenced by
the leadership behavior and life style, this transcends into
productivity level and performance.
Another way of viewing leadership is to
acknowledge what people value in individuals that are recognized as
leaders. Most people can think of individuals they consider being
leadersTherefore, these contradictory findings about the role of
leadership in organisational goal attainment suggest that there is more
need to study the role of leadership in organizational performance.
Especially, Wang Tsuil, and Xin 2011 suggest that there is need to study
more the role of leadership in organizational performance or goal
attainment because of the limited but contradictory results from
previous studies. Further, much of prior research has focused on the
role of leadership in the next of restaurants (e.g. Vanderslice 1988),
and education institutes (Bensimon 1989; Birnbaum 1990; Neuman 1992;
Youngs& King 2002; Weinberg &McDemott 2002). Therefore, there is
a limited understanding about the role of leadership on organizational
performance in the context of housing sector. Housing sector is getting
more and more importance in recent years as Government/Firms are
directing their attention towards housing delivery to her citizens to
enhance economic development and welfare of citizens. Therefore, the
motivation of present study is to investigate the role of leadership in
attaining organizational goal in the context of housing sector.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Over the years, there has been
conflicting ideas and conceptions about the effect of leadership style
and the behavior of employees towards attaining organizational goals.
Leadership includes the ultimate source of power but has that positive
ability in persuading other individuals and to be innovative in
decision-making. According to Bennis and Nanus,(2013) many organizations
are over managed and under led. The difference is crucial, managers are
people who do things right, but leaders are people who do the right
things always. Problems are bound to occur within every noted
organization and decision-making is bound to generate conflicts while
initiating policies. Managers are expected to coordinate. Whatever they
are doing to achieve organizational goals. In this light, the notion of
leadership act are those, which help a grouping meeting those stated
objectives (Bavelas 1960).
On the other hand, government
institutions generally are seen as never-do-wells compared to private
organisations. However, this perception may not be a general phenomenon
as there are cases of exceptions. It is all about who leads such
government Organisations in question, and in what circumstances? This
study wants to look into this organization whether they are doing well
or not. Thus, the researcher intends to understudy Federal Mortgage Bank
as a Financial Institution that has done well in leadership in recent
times.
However, the scholarly ideology and
dichotomy on the degree of impact exacted on productivity and employee
performance by leadership and organizational behavior remain a national
and scholarly contest. Several researchers are of the opinion that
leadership style is greatly related to performance while others believe
that employee behavior is more related to productivity and performance
level of an organization at large. Undisputable, different scholars have
different ideas and different perception about organizational behavior
and leadership style. Thus, the question remains, which leadership style
is best for organizational and employee’s performance maximization?
What degree of contribution do leadership styles have on the performance
level? Are they positive or negative relationships between the
leadership and organizational behavior and employees’performance? To
what extent are these claims applicable and feasible in the area of this
study? These constitute the major problems that triggered and motivated
this study
1.3 Research Objective
The aim of the study was to find out the
role of leadership in attaining organizational goals. The main
objectives of the study were to find out the concepts and types of
leadership and investigate how leaders attain organizational goals in
the case of Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria. The research also
described the performance of the organization in housing sector because
of the recent reformation processes and good leadership qualities. The
main purpose of this study is to ascertain the impact of leadership and
attainment of organizational goals.
Other specific objectives of this study include:
- To find out the relationship between leadershipand attainment of organizational goals.
- To discover the relationship between leadership style and attainment of organizational goals.
- To ascertain the relationship between leadership behaviorand attainment of organizational goals.
- To indicate the relationship between leadership influence and attainment of organizational goals.
1.4 Research Questions
- What is the relationship between leadership andattainment of organizational goals?
- What is the relationship between leadership style and attainment of organizational goals??
- To what extent does leadership behavior and attainment of organizational goals?
- To what degree does leadership influence affect attainment of organizational goals?
1.5 Hypotheses
H01: There is no significant relationship between leadership and attainment of organizational goals
H02: There is no significant relationship between leadership style and attainment of organizational goals
H03:There is no significant relationship between leadership behaviour and attainment of organizational goals
H04: There is no significant relationship between leadership influence and attainment of organizational goals
1.6 Significance of the study
Every research work is expected to be of relevance to certain persons thus this work will be relevant to the following ;
- To the academia, this work will be relevant as it will constitute a
literature of relevance on the topic organizational behavior and
leadership.
- It will serve as a working document for firms and business
organizations on the type of leadership style to adopt and the
implications of employee’s behavior on their performance.
- To further researchers, this work will be adopted as a research material for further studies and reference material.
- This work will highlight various strategies to manage different organizational behaviors since people behave differently.
1.7 Scope and limitation of the study
The area of coverage of this the
research work is basically on FEDERAL MORTGAGE BANK ASABA. The project
is primary concerned with the impact of leadership and attainment of
organizational goals.Ghauri and Gronhaug 2010 suggest that it is very
important for academic studies to define the limitations of the study.
Therefore, it is important to spell here the limitations of the present
study before proceeding further. Firstly,
(a) The present study merely
focuses on the role of leadership in the context of housing sector. So,
manufacturing/customer service organizations are not part of the current
study
(d) Time constraint. In as much as
the Open University system affords workers flexibility as to study, it
was not always easy balancing work, studies and family. Making the
research work a bit challenging thus, affecting the research work in
terms of wider coverage and all the likes.
(e) Paucity of materials. This is
mostly felt because of the inadequate materials or research work
present in relation to the subject matter in Asaba NOUN study Centre.
(f) Information secrecy. The
non-compliance and attitude of public servants in the public sector in
divulging information was also an impediment to this research work.
Other limitations percludes, this study has its limitations which ought
to be considered when interpreting the results. The main research design
used was surveys of Federal Mortgage bank, Asaba. Whilst surveys are
highly useful as a means of collecting data on a large scale, there are
limited in that they are cross-sectional, as only correlational data can
be collected. As noted by Muijs et al. (2006), issues of expectancy
effects and bias exist here as well, as does attributional bias. It is
not surprising that the management tend to describe themselves as
transformational leaders, whereas the bankers would rate them
differently.
The study was based on cross-sectional
data which provides a snapshot of the phenomena of interest and do not
take into consideration changes over time, unlike longitudinal studies.
Thus our data do not permit us to make strong claims about cause and
effect relationships. Nonetheless, the language of effects was used
throughout as an indication of the nature of the relationships in which
the study is interested (Leithwood and Jantzi, 2008). However,
cross-sectional designs enable correlations to be identified although
they may not aid in explaining why such correlations exist. Data was
collected from a large sample size of the federal mortgage bankers in
Asaba (72 bankers widely scattered in Asaba were sampled, out of the
total of 36 federal mortgage banks in Nigeria, neglecting the
thousands' of employees under the employs of federal mortgage banks in
Nigeria). Furthermore, supplementary data from newspapers and the
central bank of Nigeria was used to complement data from surveys.
1.8 Definition of Terms
The following terms are referred to the understated definition throughout the study.
Employee: An employee
contributes labor and expertise to an endeavor of an employer and is
usually hired to perform specific duties which are packaged into a job.
Employment: it is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee.
Leadership: It's the
process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and
support of others in the accomplishment of a common task'
Management: over the
years the philosophical terminology of "management" and "leadership"
have, in the organizational context, been used both as organizations: An
organization that is established as an instrument or means for
achieving defined objectives has been referred to as a formal
organization.
Performance: Job performance generally refers to behavior that is expected to contribute to organizational success