The Study of the Relationship between Manager s Leadership Styles and Worklife Quality (Case Study : Shahrood Hospital s Staff ) Golnar Shojaei Baghini Department Of Management, Shahrood Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrood, Semnan, Iran Hamid Akhiani Master Of Human Resources Management, Department Of Management, Shahrood Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrood, Semnan, Iran Abstract The goal of this study is to examine the relationship between manager s leadership styles and worklife quality of staff in hospitals. In this research the relationship between four leadership styles including autocrat, consulting, collaborative and submission were examined with worklife quality of staff which the latter one consists of some elements as fair payment, environmental hygiene security, human skill development, development opportunity, rule-orientation, life style, social integrity and social dependence. For this purpose, two questionnaires including leadership styles (20 questions) and worklife quality (32 questions) were designed according to Likert Scale. There were 278 subjects as sample population with data collected based on Morgan Table and then they were analyzed. Findings show that there is a significant relationship between consulting leadership, collaborative and submission leadership with improvement of worklife quality in Shahrood hospital, but it was not seen in autocrat leadership style. Finally the indexes were graded and some practical suggestions were made. Keywords: leadership styles (autocrat, consulting, collaborative, submission), worklife quality (fair payment, environmental hygiene security, human skill development, development opportunity, ruleorientation, life style, social integrity and social dependence). 1-Introduction Clinics and medical centers are, in general, in charge of prevention and treatment in a town or city and they are responsible for covering a range of functions such as: programming, organizing, directing and evaluating, organizational linking, decision making, creativity and innovation and definitely social participation.(pileroodi,2000) Nowadays, worklife quality is applied as a global concept for management of human resources and organizational development and it is considered as a key factor for leadership success and the organizational efficiency. Organizational success depends on management and leadership styles. Managers as leaders can select different styles to direct their staff. The more awareness of such a field, the more suitable leadership style and efficiency of hospital and finally the more job satisfaction and worklife quality. Worklife quality is one of the most outstanding issue for those organizations which aim to maintain their workforce. Researchers here demonstrated that worklife quality can bring about great effects on staff s behavioral reactions such as: organizational identity, job satisfaction, partnership, work performance or even organizational transferring or quitting the job (Rosser, Javinar 2003). www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJSSM: Volume: 03, Number: 07, November-2013 Page 65
s Worklife quality 2- Theoretical Basics One of the important elements on worklife quality is leadership styles and their efficiency. Management based on this concept refers to all kinds of organization as commercial, educational, cultural organizations and even hospitals and for an organization to succeed, the management board needs to know how to deal with their staff. So management is to achieve its organizational goals through leadership. (Hersey, Blanchard 1999) In fact, leadership is a concept with a wider range than management. Management is a type of leadership to reach organizational goals.the main difference lies in the term organization. Leadership takes place when a person tries to affect on a person or group regardless the cause. Management is a kind of leadership in which organizational goals are important while in leadership these goals are achieved through group work. Yet, these goals are not organizational goals. (Hersey, Blanchard 1999) Leadership means affecting people to achieve group aims. Robbert Tanenbom and others define leadership as embracing communication to reach the aims. According to conventions there are three skills for management process: technical skills, human skills and conceptual skills. The appropriate and required combination of these skills can vary as the person gets promoted from supervisor to general director. Richard I.Walton, Harvard university professor has designed eight conceptual classes to represent a framework for analyzing important properties of worklife quality as follows: Adequate bonus, work security conditions, opportunity to develop staff s skills and talents, job security, social integrity in workplace, rule-orientation and its role in workplaces, general conditions of workplaces and finally social relations in worklife. 3-Research Conceptual model Regarding research conceptual model, the relationship between dependant and independent variables are as follows: There is a relationship between leadership style and worklife quality improvement. Independent Variable Concept Component Autocrat Consulting Collaborative Submission Dependent Variable Component Concept Adequate bonus Work security conditions Opportunity to improve staff s talent Opportunity to grow Social integrity Rule orientation General life conditions Social dependence Fig 1: Research Conceptual model www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJSSM: Volume: 03, Number: 07, November-2013 Page 66
4-Research Methodology The goal of this study is to identify relationship between managers leadership styles and worklife quality of staff in Shahrood hospitals. The method of this research is descriptive. The purpose of every descriptive study is to describe some aspects of the researching phenomenon while the aim of deductive study is to generalize the results. In this research we have also tried to analyze the relationship between dependant and independent variables, and thus it has an analytical nature. This study is of field-test type. The variables neither have been manipulated nor pre organized. The statistical society of this research includes all of the staff working in Shahrood hospitals (1000 persons). The method used for determining sample volume is Krejcie. R. V & Morgan. D. W table. In this method, there is a table which adjusts the number of persons with the number of sample volumes. sample volume of this study was calculated 278 persons according to Krejcie & Morgan tables. In this study, regarding the necessity of time, cost and human sources, we developed two questionnaires. Research questionnaires consist of two sections. In first section, demographic questions were given to the subjects to collect descriptive information about the respondents. This questionnaire includes: gender, age, degree. Reliability Reliability means how trustworthy are the means of data collection. It means that if measuring tools given to the same group in a short period of time, are repeated, the results will stay unchanged. For determining reliability by using Cronbach s Alpha method, the reliability for leadership style questionnaire was 0.813 and for questionnaire with worklife quality was 0.924, which shows a significant reliability. 5- Analyses of hypotheses The first hypothesis: There is a relationship between autocrat leadership style and improvement of worklife quality. The second hypothesis: There is a relationship between consulting leadership style and improvement The third hypothesis: There is a relationship between collaborative leadership style and improvement The fourth hypothesis: There is a relationship between submission leadership style and improvement The following table shows Testing these hypotheses: Table 1: hypotheses analyze Value Asymp. Approx. T Approx. Std. Error a b Sig. Ordinal by Ordinal -.077.049-1.583 0.113 First hypothesis Kendall's tau-b N of Valid Cases.404.452.191 278.039.041.049 10.113 10.892 3.857 Second hypothesis Third hypothesis Fourth hypothesis a. Not assuming the null hypothesis b. Using the asymptotic standard error assuming the null hypothesis. www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJSSM: Volume: 03, Number: 07, November-2013 Page 67
The table shows that for the first hypothesis, Sig=0.113>0.05, therefore, the null hypothesis is confirmed which indicates that there is no relationship between autocrat leadership style and worklife quality. For the second hypothesis, Sig=0.00<0.05 and thus, null hypothesis is rejected which means there is a relationship between consulting leadership style and worklife quality improvement. For the third hypothesis, Sig=0.00<0.05 and thus, null hypothesis is rejected which shows there is a relationship between collaborative leadership style and worklife quality. The coordination correlation is 45% which is an indicator of a stronger relationship compared with other styles. For the fourth hypothesis, Sig=0.00<0.05.and thus the null hypothesis is rejected which shows there is a relationship between submission leadership style and worklife quality. But this relationship is positive an meaningful with a coordination correlation of 19% which indicates a weak relationship. 7-Results As human resources are the most important elements, Worklife quality can play an important role in every organization. Good leadership style adopted by managers has direct impact on organization s performance and staff. In this research, the data collected on 278 persons has been analyzed (Emam Hossein, Khatamolanbya, Fatemieh).According to statistical index, autocrat leadership style is the common style which has no relationship with worklife quality improvement, because autocrat or imperative style has no attention to staff s life and therefore cannot help improve their worklife quality. In consulting, collaborative and submission styles, attention to the employees and enjoying their ideas are the major elements. Therefore, There is a meaningful relationship between these leadership styles and staff s worklife improvement. Managers applying these styles can help improve their staff worklife quality. As it was discussed this issue is a key factor for an organization s stability, and the authenticity of such claim has been demonstrated using various statistical tests. Regarding staff satisfaction in Fatemieh hospital it was revealed that collaborative leadership style provided them with better worklife quality and this style was recommended as the most favorite one among the staff of other hospitals. Also, staff satisfaction in offices is more than medical departments which indicates the different views over these two groups and it is necessary to get both satisfaction. In addition, it was revealed that men more than women and lower-educated staff more than higher-educated one, are under the pressure caused by autocrat leadership style. Thus, it is essential to study more on various aspects of the issue to eradicate the deficiency in leadership styles and help to improve the staff satisfaction and their worklife quality. 8-References 1. Asefzadeh,S, Mohebbifar,R, Shirali,MH (2005) s and the performance of managers at Qazvin University of Medical Sciences. The Journal of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences ; 34: 56-62. [Persian] 2. Bogler,R (2001)The influences of leadership style on teacher job satisfaction. Edue Adm. 3. Diener,E, Sandvik,E, Povot,W & Fujita,F (1992). Extraversion and subjective well-being in a U.S. national probability sample. Journal of Research in Personality. 26, pp. 205-215. www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJSSM: Volume: 03, Number: 07, November-2013 Page 68
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