Impact of Supervisor’s Leadership Style on Employees’ Job Satisfaction; With Special Reference to the Executive Employees of the State Universities in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The state university sector plays an essential and responsible role in Sri Lanka’s higher education system. Executive officers working in the university sector contribute more to the success of the objectives of a university. In today’s complex work environment, focusing on the job satisfaction of executive officers in state universities in Sri Lanka revealed that it is at a lower than average level. Hence, this study is investigating that how supervisor’s leadership styles impact on their job satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of supervisor’s leadership styles on job satisfaction of executive employees in state universities in Sri Lanka. Here, the researcher used the basic variables of transformational leadership style, transactional leadership style and Laissez-fair leadership style in relation to leadership styles and examined the effect of them on job satisfaction. This study was carried out as a cross sectional study among a sample of 235 executive employees in state universities in Sri Lanka. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select the sample and primary data were collected using a standard questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, correlation and multiple regression were used as analytical techniques in this study. It was found that, there is a positive relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction, Transactional leadership and job satisfaction. However, there is a negative relationship between laissez-fair leadership and job satisfaction. Also, transformational leadership has a more positive effect on job satisfaction than transactional leadership style and that laissez-fair leadership style has a negative effect on job satisfaction of executive employees in state universities in Sri Lanka. And these findings are expected to be theoretically and practically important for relevant parties in the university sector to identify the impact of leadership styles and adopt more appropriate leadership styles in order to increase job satisfaction.