Abstract

This study aim to examine “The Effect of Leadership Style on Employees Attitude towards work in Restaurants in Buea”. Its specific objectives are to determine the effect of autocratic leadership style on employee’s attitude towards work in restaurants in Buea, to analyse the effect of democratic leadership style on employee’s attitude towards work in restaurants in Buea and to examine the effects of laissez-faire leadership style on employee’s attitude in restaurants in Buea. The study adopted a descriptive survey design and the random sampling technique was used to choose the sample businesses that will represent our target population.

Primary data was collected with the use of 40 questionnaires that was answered by accountants, stock keepers and other department staffs of the target businesses. The data collected were classified and analyzed using descriptive statistics and the multiple regression analysis with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The hypothesis was tested through a correlation test, and it revealed that there is a moderate positive relationship between the variables.

This result showed that Leadership Styles enhances Employees Attitude towards work in Restaurants.  The study found that the effect of autocratic leadership style on employee’s attitude towards work in restaurants in Buea was significant at 5% significance level since it calculated p-value of 0.045 was found to be lesser than 5% level of significance.

With this result, the null hypothesis was rejected and the study concluded that, there exist a significant relationship between autocratic leadership style and employee’s attitude towards work in restaurants in Buea. The study also found that the effect of democratic leadership style on employee’s attitude towards work in restaurants in Buea was significant at 5% significance level since it calculated p-value of 0.021 was found to be lesser than 5% level of significance.

With this result, the null hypothesis was rejected and the study concluded that, there exist a significant relationship between democratic leadership style and employee’s attitude towards work in restaurants in Buea. Again, the study found that the effect of laissez-faire leadership style on employee’s attitude towards work in restaurants in Buea was significant at 5% significance level since it calculated p-value of 0.023 was found to be lesser than 5% level of significance.

With this result, the null hypothesis was rejected and the study concluded that, there exist a significant relationship between laissez-faire leadership style and employee’s attitude towards work in restaurants in Buea.

Finally, findings shows that the major form of leadership that managers or leaders employed at the restaurants was the Autocratic leadership style in which leaders’ express authority to subordinates by making all the rule, not involving employees at decision making, continuous monitoring of employees and used of rewards system to punished and rewards employees job output.. Therefore, the study thus recommends that the management of restaurants in Buea should encourage managers and supervisory leaders to adopt democratic form of leadership styles in the course of discharging their managerial responsibilities.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

The advent of 21st century has introduced significant changes within the workplace environment. The organizational leaders are dealing with many pressures created by the globalization, technology advancement and social changes. In today’s turbulent and chaotic environment, the real power to act comes from recognizing the pattern of change and seizing the windows of opportunity.

Consequently, leaders’ jobs have changed from mainly supervising and giving orders to subordinates to forming and leading cross-functional teams, providing services to subordinates, and developing sustainable relationships with the clients in the field.

In this kind of environment, the organizational leaders need many competencies to survive. This means that leaders have to learn to manage complex situations by integrating all the interactions with their subordinates, peers, and superiors into a cohesive whole. As each individual represents a unique conglomerate of knowledge, skills, weaknesses, and strength, this aspect represents a challenging issue and organizational leaders must address all this diversity to accomplish the performance objectives of the organization.

Therefore, every organization and every team believes they need leadership. Leadership inside the organization affects the behavior of the employees (Naile and Selesho, 2014). Successful leaders are the iconic characters who influence their followers and subordinate’s behavior to achieve organizational goals and objectives. Michael (2010) mentions that leaders in an organization can make a change or design the culture of the organization, values, change tolerance and motivation of the employees. It shapes the organization strategies including their effectiveness.

In the food and beverage industries, the effect of leadership styles on employee performance, altitude, satisfaction, stress, and turnover intention has been thoroughly documented (Basit, Sebastian & Hassan, 2018). This study investigates the effect of leadership style on employees’ altitude in restaurants.

The effect of leadership styles on employee altitude is critical considering the developing concerns of the twenty-first century. Leadership has had a crucial effect in practically every facet of society, according to Ricketts (2005, as cited in Amegayibor, 2021). Employee work altitude is influenced significantly by leadership styles. This is because leadership is unable to cleanse itself of organisational failure. Strong leadership approaches make a big difference when it comes to overcoming challenges in the workplace (Amegayibor, 2021).

According to Wirkom (2016), Laissez-faire leadership, also known as delegative leadership, is a type of leadership style in which leaders are hands-off and allow group members to make the decisions. This style of leadership implies that someone in the position of a leader does not fulfill leadership responsibilities and practically does not engage or involve in any meaningful transactions whatsoever.

This leader does little or nothing to affect either the followers or the outcomes of their behaviors. Passive or avoidant leadership describes the leaders who avoid getting involved in work progress and decision making. Goals and standards of tasks are not clearly articulated for the followers.

It can be effective in situations where the group members are highly skilled, motivated and capable of working on their own. While the conventional term for style is “laissez-faire” and implies a completely hands-off approach, many leaders remain open and available to group members for consultation and feedback.

Some advantages of Laissez-faire Style of Leadership include Freedom to choose, no burden on the team members, sometimes: independent the group leader hardly requires any preparation time, there is a lot of freedom and Own social structures

The autocratic leadership style is characterized by individual control over all decision and little input from group members. “It is characterized by an, “I tell” philosophy. Autocratic leaders tell their subordinates what to do. This can give a business a clear direction but it may also lead managers to undervalue or ignore input from teams. However, autocratic leaders typically make decisions based on their ideas and judgments.

And rarely accept advice from followers. An autocratic approach is appropriate in a situation when a decision has to be made quickly without consulting with a large group. In particularly stressful situations, such as during military conflicts, group members may prefer the autocratic style. It is valuable when the business faces a crisis or when an urgent problem arises that requires an immediate response. However, stated that some people tend to think of this style as a vehicle for yelling, using demeaning language, and leading by threats and abusing their power.

Advantages of Autocratic Style of Leadership include  Good control, overview   Unimpaired program, Laws: Youth protection laws,   No long discussions   Group members know what they must do,   Rules give security and   Discipline while the disadvantages of Autocratic style of leadership include  Defiance,   No development of freedom of choice,   Listlessness,  Less own initiative (Fears, hatred toward other members),   No trust   Less or no self-confidence,  Hierarchy is promoted, Group interests are suppressed, Groups are not relaxed, Rivalry amongst the group members, Ability to criticize is suppressed, The independence of the group is weakened by the authority of the leader,  Talents are not recognized and therefore not promoted and  Fear turns into aggression, therefore violence.

This leadership style has been greatly criticized during the past 30 years. Some studies say that organizations with many autocratic leaders have higher turnover and absenteeism than other organizations. Certainly, Gen X employees have proven to be highly resistant to this management style. These studies say that autocratic leaders:   Rely on threats and punishment to influence employees   Do not trust employees   Do not allow for employee input   Autocratic leadership is not bad. Sometimes it is the most effective style to use.

According to Edoka (2016), this style involves the leader including employees in the decision-making process (determining) what to do and how to do it). However, the leader maintains the final decision-making authority. Using this style is not a sign of weakness; rather it is a sign of strength that employees will respect. Researchers have found that this learning style is one of the effective styles and leads to higher productivity, the better contribution from group members and increased group morale.

Because group members are encouraged to share their thoughts, democratic leadership can lead to better ideas and creative solutions to problems, group members also feel more involved and committed to projects making them more likely to care about the result. Using this style of mutual benefit, it allows them to become part of the team and allows you to make a better decision.

According to Paracha et al. (2012), Transaction means “exchange” therefore, transaction leadership deals with the exchange between the leader and his followers. Transactional leadership style is indeed easy to implement and give directions. Punishment and reward, these two words are key to this leadership style. Because people motivate easily for work with the rule of “rewards and punishments”, and transactional leadership just utilize it in the workplace. Leaders do not need much training, in the short run; there is a minimum need to train leaders. Leaders merely need to tell followers to follow the rules for rewards or else they will get punishment.

A well-defined chain of command needs to be established, where each person knows who the leader is and who is following. Employees do their duty or accomplish goals throughout organizational objectives; they are aware of the leader and each organizational member leaves them all self-determination and control.

In the workplace, transactional leaders treat their followers as subordinates, whereas transformational leader treats as followers. Subordinates just need to obey their leader in the work place; nothing more is essential. It is easy and effortless to give rewards and punishments, only need to observe how well subordinate obeys. Transactional leadership theories do not need to think about the difficulty of divergence in intelligence, passions, or task difficulty.

Leadership is the functional capacity to zealously push others to attain their maximum potential with integrity and responsibility, for both personal and professional advancement, by inspiring others via one’s example. Managers who seek the most excellent results should avoid relying on just one type of leadership (Roz, 2019).

There is a lot of study on employee engagement and performance, but there is not much on the effect between leadership style and employee altitude or work involvement. The food and beverage industry are a necessity for our human existence, and very little research has gone into this industry in depth. This is also the purpose of our research, where we consider the ability of leadership to dominate other employee job performance and its sensitivity to change (Gemeda & Lee, 2020).

When it comes to management, the link between an employee’s situation and performance is weak and left to fend for itself. A lack of direction and strategic leadership in managing daily duties results in subpar employee performance. As a result, human resource management has gradually replaced personnel management to incorporate leadership styles into successful employee management or performance (Chua et al., 2018).

1.2 Statement of the Problem

A company’s success strongly depends on its employee performance. Thus, the firm should create environments that encourage and enable people to develop and enhance their skills and talents (Iskamto et al., 2020). Leadership is vital to high performance since it organizes the company’s human resource and fulfills corporate objectives efficiently and effectively (Udovita, 2020).

This is because a good leader encourages people and motivates individuals not just to improve employee performance and dedication inside a company, but they also move over and above the job requirements, boosting the firm’s overall performance and profitability (Udovita, 2020). Therefore, high employee performance strongly depends on the leadership style. When a leader is using a suitable leadership style (autocratic, laissez-faire, democratic and transactional leadership style), he or she may influence the employee’s dedication, efficiency, and satisfaction (Belete, 2020).

The central theme and problem of this study is that, we often think of a manager or leader is expected to exhibit a right behaviour towards employees or subordinates. Yet it is realised that in most organisations in Cameroon particularly food and beverages industry, work schedule are task-focused and routine, with no flexibility, and yet decisions and policies are imposed on subordinates.

In such organisations where the leadership perceives employees as mere hands to get job done, employees would pretend to do well due to the standards and measure being assigned to them. Nevertheless, employee’s performance includes executing defined duties, meeting deadlines, employee competency, effectiveness and efficiency in doing work to a major extend is all a function of the employee’s behavior at work.

Few researches have studied transformational leadership had a significant and positive effect on employee performance(Asbari et al., 2021; Rozi et al., 2020; as cited in Fahad et al., 2021; Pawirosumarto et al., 2017; Mahdined et al., 2017; Otto, 2018). However, Prabowo et al. (2018) found that transformational leadership has no significance and has a negative effect on employee performance.

For transactional leadership, studies found that this leadership style has a significant influence on employee performance (George & Hannah, 2020). But Kour, Vaishali, & Andotra (2016) have proved that there is a negative effect of transactional leadership on employee performance. According to Joyce, Basif & Hassan (2018), their studies found that a democratic leadership style resulted in a positive and significant effect on employee job performance.

Since there are mixed results of the three different leadership styles, which is significant, negative, and not significant, also as previously mentioned, most of the studies have focused on the different industries in developing countries. Thus, these are the gaps in our study. Additionally, we observed that the employees of restaurants in Buea demonstrate poor attitude to work thereby affecting the quality of services provided by the restaurants at the detriment of the general public. Employees’ poor attitude to work could be attributed to poor leadership style.

A good leadership style is expected to direct workers behaviours toward achieving organizational predetermined goals. Therefore, this study investigates how different leadership styles (e.g. autocratic, democratic and liaises faire) affect employees’ work behaviour in restaurants in Buea.

1.3 Research Questions

1.3.1 Main Question

How does leadership style affect employee’s attitude towards work in restaurants in Buea?

1.3.2 Specific Questions

1. How does the autocratic leadership style affect employees’ attitudes towards work in restaurants in Buea?
2. How does the democratic leadership style affect employees’ attitudes towards work in restaurants in Buea?
3. How does a laissez-faire leadership style affect employees’ attitudes toward work in restaurants in Buea?

Check out: Management Project Topics with Materials