The Effect of Participative Leadership Style on the Performance of COYA Senior Managers in Kenya

Abstract

A Leadership style is key in determining the level of employee performance in a company. It can either lead to increased or decreased employee performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of participative leadership style on the performance of senior managers of the Company of the Year Award (COYA) winners in Kenya. It adopted a descriptive correlational design. The population was made up of the 13 companies that won COYA during the years 2010 to 2013. A census was used to survey the 84 senior managers who report directly to the CEOs of the 13 companies. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Descriptive and inferential techniques were used to analyze data using the statistical program for social sciences (SPSS) version 20 as a tool. The findings indicated that the application of a participative leadership style significantly affects the performance of employees positively. The analysis of variance showed that participative leadership style significantly affected employee performance, F (1.065) = 2.406, whereas, the coefficient of determination (R2 ) showed a strong positive relationship between the two variables. The findings indicate an R2 of .232, which means that participative leadership affects employee performance by 23.2 percent