A case study on the relationship between leadership style and learning motivation

Abstract

High flexibility and quick response has become the key for organization to improve or sustain its competitiveness in today's global business environment. Organizations have to learn and develop themselves to cope with the rapid pace of change. Managers need to modify their leadership style to adapt to the varying operational conditions and organizational culture. Organizational learning has drawn great attention and is being adopted by increasing number of organizations in their effort to establish a long-term learning organization strategy. Organizational learning requires sustained learning and skill-development of employees in organizations. Individual learning however does not necessarily translate into organizational learning. An effective leadership style that induces the interest of learning and development of employees for the good of organization is the building block of a learning organization. The question is whether there is a certain leadership style that complements the working of a learning organization. A four phases methodology is employed to study the influence of leadership style on learning motivation. Phase 1 - Conceptualization is the foundation stage where the groundwork of the research is prepared. In Phase 2 - Configuration, the research framework including the hypotheses setting, and designing and planning of research activities and procedures was constructed. Phase 3 - Implementation, brings about the research framework in phase 2 through various research setup and activities, for instance, questionnaire and interview designs, pilot study, and case study in SAE Magnetics (HK) (SAE) and City University of Hong Kong (CityU). Phase 4 - Data Analysis and Validation, the final phase, collates and summarizes the research findings to verify with the veracity of the five research hypotheses of this research. Transformational, transactional and participative leadership are reviewed in the context of organizational learning. The effect of these leadership styles on individual learning motivation in the context of organizational learning is examined in SAE, a manufacturing enterprise in Southern China, as well as CityU. In this case based research, it is hypothesized that the contemporary, active leadership like transformational leadership and participative leadership can have a positive effect towards employees' learning motivation while more traditional and passive leadership like transactional and laissez-faire are negative to their learning motivation. Through the case study in SAE and CityU, this and other associated hypotheses were being tested. Also, the effectiveness of the specially formed project action learning (PAL) teams in SAEYsO L programmes were studied. Overall, the results provided a qualified support for the proposed hypotheses. Though certain correlation has been noted on learning attitude and initiative with other leadership characteristics, the intensity may be described as weak. This could be due to the sample size limitation in such a single case based study. Yet, the results shed a possible influence of leadership style in particular, on employees' attitude and initiative but not necessary on the subsequent OL effort and commitment in the OL initiatives like the PAL programme.

Date of Award	15 Jul 2005
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Kong Bieng CHUAH (Supervisor)