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Leadership styles and employees’ motivation: Perspective from an emerging

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Article  in  The Journal of Developing Areas · January 2017

DOI: 10.1353/jda.2017.0093

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 The Journal of Developing Areas
Volume 51 No. 4 Fall 2017

LEADERSHIP STYLES AND EMPLOYEES’

MOTIVATION:
PERSPECTIVE FROM AN EMERGING
ECONOMY
Muhammad Fiaz
Qin Su
Amir Ikram*
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
Aruba Saqib
University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan

ABSTRACT

Leadership deficit has been Pakistan’s most pressing issue for decades, and this problem is even
more pervasive in public organizations than private sector. Tackling the leadership crisis is now
increasingly a question of what constitutes an appropriate leadership style to augment motivation of
employees. Thus the purpose of the study is to explore the intriguing question of the most
pragmatic leadership style and its potential impact on employees’ motivation. For this purpose,
autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire styles are considered as independent variables, while
employees’ motivation is the dependent variable. Data is collected via survey questionnaire, based
on closed-ended Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), from a sample of 110 senior level
and middle level managers working at WAPDA, an autonomous organization of Pakistan working
under the administrative control of federal government for the development of energy resources.
Descriptive statistics, reliability statistics, multiple regression model and analysis of variance are
deployed to test hypotheses of the study and derive practical implications. Autocratic leadership
style is found to be more dominant and exhibits significant negative relationship with employees’
motivation, whereas democratic and laissez-faire leadership styles are shown to positively predict
motivation of employees. However, the positive relationship between democratic leadership and
employees’ motivation comes out to be insignificant, which depicts the bureaucratic and
decentralized nature of the organization. The research findings are in line with the theoretical
assumptions for autocratic and laissez-faire style, but inconsistent with democratic leadership style.
The paper proposes the preference for democratic and laissez-faire leadership style in the face of
deleterious bureaucratic environment. Though few researchers investigated the relationship
between leadership styles and employees’ performance, there is hardly any study that focuses on
bureaucratic environment of an emerging economy. The study offers broader policy implications to
strengthen institutions by establishing democratic leadership style. In a context marked by
bureaucracy and sluggishness, top management needs to focus on leadership development
programs and pursuance of democratic leadership style.

JEL Classifications: C12, D22, L32, M54

Keywords: Leadership style, autocratic leadership, democratic leadership, laissez-faire
leadership, employees’ motivation
Corresponding Author’s Email Address: amirikram12@hotmail.com
 144

1. INTRODUCTION

Leaders play a pivotal role in leading their followers to fulfill organizational goals
effectively. They need to communicate with their employees thoroughly, and manage
human capital, finance, and marketing wisely. In simple terms, leadership is a process by
which an individual motivate or influence others to achieve organization goals (Kesting
et al., 2016). It is the process of enhancing and encouraging the self-esteem of employees
to achieve organizational task and goals. Employee motivation is a way to achieve
unusual goals, in which they put effort above and beyond stated organizational goals.
Comprehensively speaking, employee motivation is the extent to which employees are
bound emotionally or psychologically towards the organization (Anitha, 2014). In
achieving organizational goals, employees are considered to be the most effective source.
Employees have the tendency to utilize the organizational capital efficiently and increase
the productivity and profitability of the organization. The well-qualified, capable and
talented workforce is needed to achieve organization strategic goals. In order to
advantageously utilize that asset, leadership style is considered being the most important
determinant to increase employee motivation. Induction of hardworking, commitment
and motivation in employees is at the core of an organizational success. The committed
workforce is an important success factor for organizations to achieve their desired goals.
The significant importance of committed workforce is that it has less intention to leave
the organization. The employees’ motivation, performance and productivity should
increase if they are treated with good leadership style. Leadership styles can be
categorized as autocratic, laissez faire, or democratic (Lewin, Lippitt & White, 1939;
Bass & Stogdill, 1990). The government and semi-government institutions of developed
economies have attained maturity, and mostly following democratic leadership style
(Giddens, 2013). Different national cultures shape the mindset of individuals in a
different way, thus there can be differences in management styles and employee
motivation throughout the world (Hofstede, 1980). However, much attention has not been
given towards examining the state institutions of developing economies with respect to
their leadership style. Thus implications of leadership and the relevant leadership style is
even more important for emerging economies, such as Pakistan, which are marked by
roller coaster period and dynamic change. Thus it is imperative to analyze the pivotal
organization of an emerging economy and the prevalent leadership style.

The research paper examines the role of leaders and managers working in Water and
Power Development Authority (WAPDA), an autonomous organization assigned with the
vital tasks related to electricity sector of Pakistan. Its obligations include development of
water reservoirs, generation of electricity, transmission and distribution to the end users
in industry, commerce, trading, agriculture, domestic and various social sectors
(WAPDA, 2016). Considering the fact that electricity crisis is perhaps the biggest
problem that Pakistan is currently facing (Ikram, Su & Sadiq, 2016), it is imperative to
analyze the entities and stakeholders involved from diversified perspectives; WADPA is
primarily responsible for electricity generation, and constitutes an integral entity in
hydropower development (Ikram, Su & Fiaz, 2017). We identify the elements of
successful leadership development, and assesses the competencies that needs to be
developed. The objective of the study is to determine the effect of autocratic, democratic
 145

and laissez faire leadership style on employees’ motivation. For organizational

effectiveness it is imperative to have excellent leadership which should be complemented
by higher levels of employees’ motivation. Next section provides a comprehensive view
on the concepts of leadership styles and motivation. Third section describes research
methodology and theoretical framework regarding the relationship of the most practiced
leadership style with employees’ motivation. Section four elaborates data analysis and
hypotheses testing. Lastly, the study offers concluding remarks regarding predominant
leadership styles and provides practical implications for prospective leaders and
entrepreneurs alike.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Leadership styles

Leadership style is one of the most important human resource-related outcomes, and
perhaps one of the most studied topic in management and industrial psychology. This is
probably because leadership happens to be the core but sometimes contentious issue in
organizational research (Kesting et al., 2016; Meindl, 2013; Puni, Ofei & Okoe, 2014).
Psychologists Lewin, Lippitt and White (1939) identified three major leadership styles,
namely, democratic, autocratic and laissez-faire styles. Leadership enables organizations
to be more productive and profitable, but the extent of success depends on the style of the
leader and the resultant environment created for employees to function well. Asrar-ul-
Haq and Kuchinke (2016) is of the view that the kind of leadership style exhibited by
managers to a large extent influences organizational valued outcomes such as low
employee turnover, reduced absenteeism, customer satisfaction and organizational
effectiveness. Similarly, leadership style controls interpersonal, reward and punishment
that shapes employee behavior, motivation and attitude which impacts on organizational
performance (Pufi et al., 2014). It can either lead to inspiration or disenchantment among
employees resulting in increase or decrease productivity. Furthermore, leadership style at
the workplace can affect employee’s self-image either positively or negatively,
particularly an employee’s health (Kahn & Katz, 1952). Most leadership theorists agree
that the traits, style, and contingency theories dominate the leadership literature (Jung et
al., 2014; Kesting et al., 2016; Schein, 2015). The leadership style movement started in
1945 at the Ohio State University. Significantly, the “Consideration” and “Initiating
Structure” study stood out from these early contributions which provided the basic
dimensions of leadership behavior in formal organizations. Consequently, contributors
like Likert (1961), Kahn & Katz (1952) also expanded the works of their predecessors by
basically analyzing the relationship between supervisory behavior and employee
productivity and satisfaction in 1947 at the University of Michigan. Their studies
identified two styles of leadership - Employee Centered (EC) and Production Centered
(PC) leadership. EC leaders focus more on employee goals and satisfaction and less time
in performing similar task assigned to employees. It is also disinterested in punishing
employees when they go wrong. On the other hand, PC leaders are interested in output
therefore spend more time in actual supervisory work related to production and less
attention on supervisory activities like planning (Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber, 2009).
Globalization resulted in the highly diversified labor, thus it is important to analyze
leadership style from cross-cultural perspective. Bass (1997) observed that there are few
 146

leadership strategies, for example, transactional and transformational leadership, that

transcend national boundaries. Laissez faire style of management let the employees
realize their potential without the undue meddling of management, thus it contributes
towards transactional leadership and has positive impact on motivation (Chaudhry &
Javed, 2012).

2.2 Autocratic leadership

Autocratic leadership style (AL) places more emphasis on performance and low emphasis
on people. The focus of power is with the leader and all interactions within the group
move towards the leader. The leader unilaterally exercises all decision-making authority
by determining policies, procedures for achieving goals, work task, relationships, control
of reward, and punishment (Van Vugt et al., 2004). The basic assumption underlying
autocratic leadership style is based on the premise that, people are naturally lazy,
irresponsible, and untrustworthy and leaving the functions of planning, organizing, and
controlling to subordinate would yield fruitless results and so such functions should be
accomplished by the leader without the involvement of people. Further, Likert's (1961)
four management systems, characterized autocratic leadership style system as an
exploitative-authoritative system where power and direction come from the top
downwards, where threats and punishments are employed, and where communication is
poor and team-work is non-existent. Jung, Jeong and Mills (2014) described an autocratic
leadership style on a continuum and opined that autocratic leaders make decisions and
announce them, without inviting suggestions from subordinates. Autocratic leader relies
heavily on authority, control, power, manipulation and hard work to get the job done
(Puni et al., 2016). In the autocratic leadership system, formal centralized structures,
procedures, processes and mechanism are clearly defined and are enforced to ensure that
subordinates do their jobs efficiently within the rules. Punishments are often applied
when mistakes are made and sanctions are in the form of withholding attention or good
assignment or making people feel guilty. Motivation under this leadership style is by the
means of economic incentives which are extrinsic in nature and based on performance.
Development within an autocratic system comes from hard work and rarely does
delegation of authority practiced. Most theorists have identified autocratic leaders with
authoritarian leaders simply because research has proven that there is a strong positive
correlation between autocratic leadership style and authoritarianism (Chemers, 2014;
Schuh, Zhang, & Tian, 2013; Svolik, 2013).

2.3 Democratic leadership

Bhatti et al. (2012) suggest that democratic leadership style focuses more on people and
there is greater interaction within the group. The leadership functions are shared with
members of the group and the leader is more part of the team. Similarly, Jones et al.
(2016) and Raelin (2012) suggested that the principles of democratic leadership is
friendliness, helpfulness, and the encouragement of participation. In the same vein,
McGregor and Cutcher-Gershenfeld (2006) described this leadership style as benevolent,
participative, and believing in people; they equated democratic leader to the Theory Y
manager which is associated with increased follower productivity, satisfaction,
involvement, and commitment. The philosophical assumption underlying democratic
 147

leadership style is that naturally all people are trustworthy, self-motivated, like
responsibility and challenging work, and are encouraged by organizational conditions to
foster teamwork, high performance and satisfaction (Jones et al., 2016).

2.4 Laissez faire leadership

The main emphasis of laissez faire leadership style is neither on performance nor people;
the philosophical assumption is that naturally human beings are unpredictable and
uncontrollable and trying to understand people is a waste of time and energy. On this
hypothesis, the leader tries to maintain a low profile, respects all constituencies within the
organization, tries not to create waves of disturbance, and relies on the few available
loyalists to get the job done (Chaudhry & Javed, 2012). Laissez-faire leader lives and
work with whatever structure put in place without any suggestions or criticisms. Goals
and objectives are established only when necessary and required. The leader is not
control-frisk and abdicates controlling to employees. Such leaders shun decision-making
as best as they can and would like to avoid communication, and converses only when
needed. Thus, the business of employee development is not a concern to the laissez faire
leader, as they believe that employees can take care of themselves (Wong & Giessner,
2015). It is pertinent to mention here that in a study on the banking sector of Pakistan,
laissez-faire leadership style revealed negative relationship with employee performance
outcomes (Asrar-ul-Haq & Kuchinke, 2016).

2.5 Evaluating motivation and it relationship with leadership

Employees’ motivation is dependent upon leadership styles to quite an extent, though is

varies from organization to organization. Bouckenooghe, Zafar and Raja (2015) argues
that motivation is a key component of leadership. They state that leadership is, amongst
others, the ability to motivate others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of
the groups of which they are members. Asrar-ul-Haq and Kuchinke (2016) suggests that
motivation of employees in the public sphere is very important as the performance of
governments and their administrations affect our society much more than any other
private sector organization. With respect to measuring motivation, Touré-Tillery and
Fishbach (2014) differentiated between the outcome-oriented motivation to complete a
goal and the process-focused motivation that entails comprehensive elements of goal
pursuance. Fishbach and Choi (2012) compared the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on
behavior and advocated the creation of context to highlight and distinguish one of these
dimensions, for example through experimental designs. While investigating outcome-
focused dimension of motivation, Touré-Tillery and Fishbach (2012) evaluated
motivation through adherence to ethical, religious, and correctness standards over the
course of successive actions. They further suggested that means-oriented motivation is U-
shaped, because beginning and end activities are comprehended as more analytic for
making self-interpretations.

Democratic leaders rely upon group decision making and active member involvement,
autocratic styles are domineering and laissez-faire styles also known as the “hands-off”
styles minimize the leader’s involvement. Therefore, Bhatti et al. (2012) reveal that
democratic leaders take great care to involve all members of the team in discussion, and
 148

can work with a small but highly motivated team. Schwartz (2013) found a high
submissiveness among workers in democratic organizations, but those in autocratic
organizations expressed frustration and anger. Bouckenooghe et al. (2015) argues that the
effectiveness of group leaders is dependent on the criterion which was being used to
assess leadership. Thus, if leadership is assessed in terms of productivity, then autocratic
style is most efficient but if the role is seen as maintaining good morale and a steady level
of work, democratic style is effective.

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY & HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

Relationship between independent and dependent variables is depicted in theoretical
framework (Figure 1). Based on the evidence from previous studies (Lewin et al., 1939;
Bass & Stogdill, 1990), three leadership styles are taken as independent variables, namely
autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire leadership styles. While employees’ motivation is
the dependent variable.

3.1 Theoretical framework

LEADERSHIP
STYLES

Autocratic
Leadership

Democratic Employees
Leadership Motivation

Laissez-Faire
Leadership

FIGURE 1. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDEPENDENT AND DEPENDENT

VARIABLES

3.2 Regression Model and hypotheses formulation

 149

In order to determine the association between employees’ motivation and leadership

styles, a multiple regression analysis employing three independent variables was carried
out. The operationalization of dependent and independent variables are as follows:

EM pfe = β0 + β1 (AL) + β2 (DL) + β3 (LF) + ηi +ɛit

Where,
 EM pfe = Employees’ motivation (process-focused evaluation)
 AL = Autocratic Leadership
 DL = Democratic Leadership
 LF = Laissez faire
 ηi=unobservable heterogeneity
 Ɛ it= error term
 Β0=constant variable
 Β1, β2, & β3= Proportionate change in dependent variable due to independent
variables.
On the basis of aforementioned prior literature and multiple regression model, following
hypotheses are formulated:

H1: Autocratic leadership has a significant impact on employee’s motivation.

H2: Democratic leadership has a significant impact on employee’s motivation.
H3: Laissez-faire leadership has a significant impact on employee’s motivation.

3.3 Research design

Stratified sampling technique was used to collect data from 110 high and middle level
managers, working in WAPDA. The sampling technique ensured the proportionate
representation of both high-level and middle-level managers. The selection of WAPDA is
imperative from two perspectives: firstly, the persistent problem of power shortage asks
for critical examination of the entities and stakeholders involved (Ikram, Su & Fiaz,
2017); secondly, the federal institutions of developing South Asian economies are
notorious for their bureaucratic style of governance. With respect to the research
framework, independent variables are leadership styles (Autocratic, Democratic, Laissez-
faire) and the dependent variable is employees’ motivation. The cross-sectional study
makes use of closed-end Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio,
2000), based on Likert scale, as a survey instrument for data collection. For the purpose
of evaluating employee’s motivation, we relied on process-focused approach as
elaborated by Touré-Tillery and Fishbach (2014). We conduct the Cronbach’s alpha test
to valid the MLQ. As per Table 1, the Cronbach’s alpha for the autocratic leadership
 150

(AL) is 0.787, suggesting that the items have relatively high internal consistency. The
alpha coefficient for the democratic leadership (DL) is 0.682, depicting relatively low
internal consistency. The alpha coefficient for the Laissez faire (LF) is 0.890, which is
highest as compared to other two variables. The alpha coefficient for the employees’
motivation (EM) is 0.834 suggests that the items have relatively high internal
consistency. The overall alpha coefficient for the four items is 0.787, signifying that the
items have relatively high internal consistency and thus survey instrument is expected to
generate pragmatic results.

TABLE 1. RELIABILITY STATISTICS TEST

Variables Cronbach's Cronbach's Alpha Based on N of Items
Alpha Standardized Items

AL 0.787 0.771 5
0.682 0.634 5
DL
0.890 0.888 5
LF
0.718 0.778 20
Overall

Table 2 portrays that the value of N is valid for all the dependent and independent
variables. Similarly missing questions are found to be zero. The overall mean is found to
be 2.5160, and standard deviation is found to be 0.33397. The overall variance is found to
be 0.112. Therefore, all the results analyzed show significance and reliability of data.

TABLE 2. DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

AL DL LF EM Overall

Valid 110 110 110 110 110

N
Missing 0 0 0 0 0

Mean 1.7618 3.4333 1.6455 3.2061 2.5160

Std. Deviation 0.4617 0.7075 0.5134 0.6289 0.3339

Variance 0.2130 0.5010 0.2640 0.395 0.112

Minimum 1.00 1.67 1.00 1.67 1.52

Maximum 3.20 4.67 3.33 4.67 3.31

 151

4. DATA ANALYSIS & HYPOTHESES TESTING

Reliability test and descriptive statistics endorsed the research methodology of the study.
Now, in order to empirically test the formulated hypotheses that we set forth in Section 3,
we deploy analysis of variance test (ANOVA) with the help of statistical software SPSS.

TABLE 3. MODEL SUMMARY

Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the

Estimate
1 0.476a 0.226 0.197 0.41386
a. Predictors: (Constant), AL, DL, LF

In regression model (Table 3), R-value depicts multiple correlation coefficient

between the independent variables (predictors) and the dependent variable (). The
multiple correlation between the predictors (AL, DL and LF) and the dependent variable
(employee motivation) is 0.465, thus there is moderate positive relation between the
variables. R square is the ratio of the variance in the dependent variable solely or jointly
explained by the independent variables; the value of 0.226 shows that AL, DL and LF
account for 2.26% of the variation in employees’ motivation.

TABLE 4. ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

Regression 5.255 4 1.314 7.670 .000b
Residual 17.984 105 .171
Total 23.240 109
a. Dependent Variable: EM
b. Predictors: (Constant), AL, DL, LF

The results of the study and hypotheses testing are primarily based on Table 4 and Table
5. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is depicted in Table 4, which shows that the effect of
predictor on dependent variable is statistically significant which is below 0.05. ANOVA
indicates that the model is reliable and best fitted at all conventional levels of
significance. Since p-value for F-statistic is less than the 5% level of significance, the
overall model of the study is significant and correctly specified. Table 5 shows that the
value of beta and standard error is deviating from variable to variable. The significance of
AL is low, i.e. 0.164.

The study suggests that autocratic leadership (AL) has significant negative
relationship with employees’ motivation at WAPDA. The negative relationship between
autocratic leadership and motivation of employees is in line with the previous studies
(Kipnis et al., 1981; Jung et al., 2014). Lack of employees’ motivation can be traced back
 152

to the prevalence of autocratic leadership style. As suggested by Bass (1997), the

democratic and laissez-faire leadership styles depict positive relationship with
employees’ motivation. However, the analysis depicted that the values do not support
significant relationship between democratic leadership style and employees’ motivation.
This discrepancy is understandable as the bureaucratic environment hardly allows
employees to participate in decision making, and thus there is lack of democratic
leadership.

TABLE 5. HYPOTHESES TESTING

Unstandardized Standardized
Coefficients Coefficients
Model
B Std. Error Beta t Sig. Decision
(Constant) 0.990 0.294 3.37 0.001
AL -0.192 0.067 -0.294 -2.87 0.005 Significant
DL 0.083 0.079 0.092 1.05 0.164 Insignificant
LF 0.079 0.070 0.107 1.12 0.009 Significant
EM 0.411 0.079 0.496 5.23 0.000
a. Dependent Variable: EM

The results of hypotheses are:

H1: Autocratic Leadership has a significant negative impact on employee’s motivation

H2: Democratic Leadership do not have significant positive impact on employee’s
motivation
H3: Laissez-Faire Leadership has a significant positive impact on employee’s motivation

5. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY

This study is an effort to explore three prominent leadership styles and understand its
impact on the motivation of employees working in the federal or semi-government
institutions of Pakistan. Much like other public sector and semi-government
institutions, WAPDA has become victim of deleterious bureaucracy and sluggishness.
It is vital to strengthen such institutions by establishing democratic traditions and
leadership style. For this endeavor, we conducted cross-sectional study of WAPDA, an
autonomous federal institution of Pakistan, to examine the relationship between
leadership style and employees’ motivation. The observations of the study indicate that
all three leadership styles have their own importance with regard to enhancing
employees’ motivation and performance. Autocratic leadership style was found to be
 153

more rampant in our given organization, which results in lack of employees’ motivation.
Though autocratic style could not be omitted altogether, but its dominance could be
reduced to a certain level by the training of prospective leaders in an appropriate way to
enhance employees’ motivation. Meanwhile, preference for laissez faire and democratic
leadership styles can enhance productivity of the enterprise. This will boost employees’
morale and the resultant voluntarily behavior will improve efficiency and effectiveness of
the organization. The significant positive relationship of laissez faire style suggests that
motivational level is high because this particular style let the employees to realize their
potential without undue meddling of management. (Chaudhry & Javed, 2012). Adoption
of democratic and laissez faire style can lead to generation of positive outcomes on the
part of employees. As noted by Kesting et al. (2016), leadership styles are contingent
upon environment and various stages of innovation. Enterprises in Pakistan are facing
widespread technical inefficiency (Ikram, Su & Sadiq, 2016), so entrepreneurs and
leaders need to inculcate appropriate leadership style to enhance productivity and
performance. Besides, state owned and semi-government owned institutions are notorious
for their bureaucratic environment and autocratic style of leadership. Since the
organization under investigation, i.e. WAPDA, operates under the administrative control
of the federal government, it is inherently characterized by bureaucratic environment. In
this regard, the leadership and personality traits can enhance performance by taking care
of the negative impacts of bureaucratic environment and ensuring democracy; personality
traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness comes handy for democratic style of
leadership and enhancing performance (Anwar et al., 2017).

Though the findings of this study are context specific, however they are in line with
the theoretical assumptions of autocratic style and laissez-faire style (Van Vugt et al.,
2004; Wong & Giessner, 2015), but inconsistent with democratic leadership style
(Raelin, 2012). The study has broader practical implications for researchers and
academicians to better understand the role and nature of leadership styles and their
impact on motivation of employees. Leadership deficit is perhaps Pakistan’s most
pressing problem, and the study provides at least a prime facie evidence on how
leadership styles should be devised. Based on the outcomes, top management in the state-
owned societies should realize the significance of effective leadership style and focus on
leadership development programs. The findings can be helpful for the managers and
leaders to understand that which kind of leadership style is most appropriate in terms of
its outcomes and motivations, and how they can modify their leadership styles to make it
further result oriented. Furthermore, leaders should empower their associates so that they
can accomplish their responsibilities in an effective manner. Empowerment includes
providing training and education necessary for delegated task completion. Caution must
be taken while strategizing, as laissez-faire leadership style exhibited negative association
with employee performance outcomes in terms of employee satisfaction in the context of
Pakistan (Asrar-ul-Haq & Kuchinke, 2016). Though selection of appropriate leadership
 154

style is a contingency factor, our study suggests the preference for the style that has both
a high concern for people and a high concern for the task, i.e. democratic style. The
responses on Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) were self-report measures,
and thus can lead to single-source bias; managers and leaders at WAPDA themselves
rated their leadership and has direct relevance of this with their work, so the issues of
social desirability and reactivity can arise. This problem can be mitigated through cross-
ratings, so it is recommended for future studies. Findings are less generalizable as the
sample size was limited to only semi-government institution. Future researches may
include other semi-government institutions and perform comparative analysis. It is
further advised to address the moderating and mediating factors of leadership styles and
innovative work attitude.

ENDNOTES

* Acknowledgement
The authors are thankful to State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Key Lab
of the Ministry of Education for Process Control and Efficiency Engineering, and School of
Management of Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. The research contribution has also been
facilitated by ‘National Natural Science Foundation of China [Project Number: 71371151]’ and
‘Humanities and Social Sciences of Ministry of Education Planning Fund [13YJA630078]’.

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