The Practice of Transformational Leadership Style in the Ministry of Labour and Social Development in the Kingdom of Bahrain

Are managers at the Ministry of Labour and Social Development in the Kingdom of Bahrain practicing the Transformational Leadership style? Do managers with longer years of experience practice the four dimensions of transformational leadership more frequently than those with lesser years of experience? These are some of the questions that this study have sought answers to. Specifically, the research tried to determine the frequency at which transformational leadership dimensions such as idealized influence; inspirational motivation; intellectual stimulation; and individualized considerations are being practiced by managers in the said ministry, based on the perceptions of 96 rank and file employees, and 38 managers. It also determined if the frequency of practicing transformational leadership style is significantly related with the years of managerial experience. The study further investigated if managers’ perceptions would significantly differ with that of the rank & file employees. The findings revealed that years’ of managerial experience is not significantly related to the frequency of practice of transformational leadership dimensions. It was also found that idealized influence was the most frequently practiced transformational leadership dimension, while inspirational motivation was the least frequently practiced one in the Ministry of Labour and Social Development in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Keywords: Transformational Leadership, Managers, Leadership Dimensions, Government Leaders, Kingdom of Bahrain DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-26-13 Publication date:September 30th 201

Kolb’s Learning Styles and Managerial Concern for People and Task: A Reflective Measurement Model

The main aim of this paper is to develop a reflective measurement model utilizing the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), and employing Kolb’s four learning styles (activist, reflector, theorist & pragmatist) as predictors for the two managerial orientations (task & people) espoused by the Blake & Mouton’s Managerial Grid. The survey included 120 academic and academic-support managers from six higher education institutions in Metro Manila, Philippines. We assessed the PLS path using Consistent PLS algorithm and measured the construct’s convergent validity using both the Cronbach Alpha, rho A, and Composite Reliability, while the Fornell-Larcker test was used to measure the discriminant validity of the variable constructs. Outer loadings and Outer weights of the latent variables were extracted using the PLS Algorithm. We ran a complete bootstrapping to statistically test the significance of the PLS-SEM results. Among the findings of this research was the strong positive association of the activist learning style with managers’ task orientation while reflector, theorist and pragmatist learning styles have weak positive association with the people orientation of managers. Keywords: Learning styles, Managerial orientation, Leadership orientation, Philippines DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-9-02 Publication date:March 31st 202