Assessing the Relationship Between Leadership Styles and Job Satisfaction

Abstract

The United States workforce is in a period of transition. In April 2020, more than 20 million U.S. workers were out of work. As the economy seeks to reboot, organizations will have to prioritize how they rebuild their workforces. Prior to the global pandemic, there was nearly unprecedented low unemployment within the United States. Firms were constantly seeking ways to stabilize turnover within their organizations to achieve a competitive advantage. This research was conducted to analyze the impact leadership style has on employee job satisfaction. Surveys were collected to determine if there were significant differences in the perceived leadership styles within the industry, a relationship between leadership and job satisfaction, and identify a monetary threshold for which employees would quit. A hybrid of the Vannsimpco Leadership Survey (VLS) and Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) was administered to the 92 survey respondents. A single factor, one-way ANOVA was conducted to analyze the participants’ responses to the survey. The ANOVA calculations revealed a significant difference among the nine leadership styles (F [8, 819] = 12.36, p < .001). A Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) test was used to test for significance between the means and found significance in 14 of the 36 pairs.