Effect of Leadership on Job Performance: A Case Study of Woolworths Limited

This research investigates the effect of leadership on job performance in Woolworths Limited. It aims to determine the leadership-related factors that affect employee performance, the state of leadership practices, and strategies that can be used to realize effective leadership.

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Effect of leadership on job performance (a case study of the Woolworths limited)
Name
Course
Lecturer
Date

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Industry partner
Wools worth is one of the large and leading supermarkets based in Australia. It is a
limited liability company with over 1000 stores and branches within Australia. The company
also extends its services to other nations. The company has minimum employees of 1115001
working in its branches and stores. Most of these employees are tasked with distribution and
delivery responsibilities. The many employees are meant to ensure quality services and range of
products reach this company’s customers in time and good condition. (woolworth group 2018)
Research problem
It’s the objective for every organization to actualize the maximum profits possible.
Through good leadership skills, effective management, adoption of an effective leadership style
and good leadership behaviors, every organization should be able to motivate employee
performance which intern is a factor that helps the organization achieve the desired and set goals
as well. Lack of these skills in leadership is the key reason for poor employee performance
which later attributes organizations lack of objective fulfillment. This is a factor that has greatly
affected employee performance in the Woolworth limited company after that affecting the
overall output of the company.
For some period, Woolworth branches have facing employee performance related
challenges which has ended up affecting the company with a decline in the quality of services
being offered. This has led to a decline in some of the business branches. There is a need for
change in the leadership styles, leadership behaviors and development in the whole leadership
perspective to help the Woolworth Company. The effects of this can be evidenced by tumbling
stock value which has recently been quoted to be as low as 16.5% that is worse than any other

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year and competing company as well. (Moorad 2017) This research is an attempt to investigate
some of the leading factors that affect employee performance in the case of the Woolworth
Company.
Research aim
The aim of this research is to determine how leadership has been affecting Woolworth’s
employee performance. It also gives some recommendations on the strategies that can be adopted
to change leadership style behaviors and developments that can be a corrective response to the
current situation.
Research questions
1. What are some of the leadership-related factors that affect employee performance in the
Woolworth Company?
2. How does each leadership factor affect the Woolworth company employee performance?
3. What is the state of the leadership practices in the Woolworth Company and how does it
affect employee performance?
4. What are some of the ways and strategies that can be used to realize effective leadership
leading to good employee performance?
5. What are the outcomes to the company if effective leadership is adopted?
Literature review
Employee performance is a key factor that every leader is always aiming to achieve. The
style of leadership and the nature of the work organization can affect staff satisfaction which a
contributing factor in determining their levels of job performance. (Bass and Bass 2009)

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What is leadership?
Once, Warren Bennis developed a theory to explain what leadership pertains. He claimed
that "leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." This means that leaders should
clearly understand themselves and possess both vision and ability to translate the vision to their
teams and staff as well as establishing an environment of trust. (Dininni 2017) According to
(Nebel 2003), leadership has adverse effects on the employee performance of every organization.
There are multiple factors linked to leadership that affect the level of employee performance
within any given organization. Some of these leadership factors include leadership styles,
leadership behaviors, leadership motivation and leadership development.
Leadership factors that affect employee performance
Leadership style
According to (gabzhalilov 2015) leadership is one of the most researched and least
understood phenomena on earth. Leadership is very much related to performance. There exists a
relationship between a leader and the level of performance that his or her followers exhibit. A
leader must inspire workers; motivate them as a way of bringing the best out of them. One of the
ways leaders use to achieve these is the employment of effective strategies and styles that tend to
affect work performance. If a leader adopts weak and poor strategies and leadership style, it
affects employee performance by reducing the quality of service from them.
If a leader adopts a good and effective leadership style, this affects the employee
performance with improved service quality. (gabzhalilov 2015) Leaders are known to possess the
capacity of influencing a group of workers within an organization to the realization of certain set

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goals. Certain leadership styles can be used to achieve such. Misuse of such styles, on the other
hand, breaks the togetherness in a group of employees, and this diminishes their performance and
hinders their way towards goals attainment. Different leadership styles influence employee
performance from different perspectives according to (Daniel 2002). According to (Mohammed
and Hassan 2015) leadership is a prolific area of study that can be explained by a variety of
theories. Such include Kurt wins leadership styles theories, the theory of the Blake- Mouton
managerial grid, the Hersey- Blanchard situational leadership theories, the path-goal theory, the
six emotional leadership style theory and the transformational and transactional leadership style
theory of 1978. The common leadership styles that are widely used include:
1. Autocratic leadership
2. Democratic leadership
3. Participative leadership
4. Transformational leadership
5. Transactional leadership
6. Laissez-faire leadership
Autocratic leadership
This is a type of leadership whereby leaders are known for giving orders with an instant
response of obedience from the workers, and there is always neither a room for arguments nor
negotiations. With autocratic leadership, the leader does not involve the team of employees in
making plans and policies. The employees do not get explanations and reasons behind some
plans and actions and future intentions from the leaders. Moreover, with this kind of leadership,
leaders are never part of the organization, only that they issue directives.

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In addition to that, this leadership style is characterized by very unrealistic demands,
over discipline measures and punishment that leaves no room for questioning. This kind of
leadership has a negative impact on the employee performance. With this kind of a leader,
employees are much oppressed and feel very inferior while doing their tasks. They are never
involved in decision making and planning, and this turns their morale down. Job resignations,
absenteeism can reflect poor employee performance, and a decline in the goods and services
being produced and increased customers complain regarding levels of satisfaction.
Democratic leadership
According to (Cherry 2018) democratic leadership is the type of leadership whereby one
person does not make the decision making and planning but the entire group of members
harmoniously. Within democratic leadership, there is a sense of participative role in the
decision-making process. There is always freedom of expression and share of ideas within this
style of leadership. It’s focused on equality and the free flow of ideas from employees. The role
of the leader, in this case, is majorly guidance and offering control measures on all activities
within the organization. Since not everyone who can take part in decision making, the leaders
play a role in deciding who can participate in the decision making process.
Researchers have established that democratic leadership style is always very productive
since it encourages employee performance by motivating them through rewards for creativity by
job promotions or salary increment. (Heneman and Gresham 2000) When employees are
involved in the leadership circle for instance in decision making, this can motivate them and
make them more likely to care about the result or output which in this case are the objectives and
set goals. However, this style is time-consuming due to the plenty of time used when allowing

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people to contribute, development of plans and voting process to determine the best action to
take within an organization as Woolworth limited in the UK. If a leader does not allow freedom
of expression, equality and free flow ideas though democratic leadership, employee performance
is likely to go low. This is an automatic reason for the poor output of goods and service for that
organization.
Participative leadership
It’s another style of leadership similar to democratic leadership. Employees are involved
in the decision-making process whereby the leader seeks for their opinions and later uses the
opinions for decision making. The leader frequently updates the employees on the progress and
the set plans where they can allow room for some debate and propose some changes as well. This
is a motivating factor to the employees and thereby positively boosting employee performance.
On the other hand, neglecting the participative leadership style, the leader is creating a ditch for
the organization.
Transformational leadership
In this kind of leadership, leaders tend to motivate their employees to meet certain
expectations by providing them with a vision. Through charisma and vision, a leader can inspire
their employees who later promote job performance through modification of their beliefs and
attitudes.
Transactional leadership
It’s a style of leadership that can be used by a leader who is goal oriented. According to
(Dininni 2017), employees are rewarded whenever they accomplish some tasks. In this case,

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such leaders are majorly concerned with task accomplishment and employee performance as
well. They tend to use both positive and negative reinforcements to arrive at their desired goals.
They are therefore in most cases effective styles for corrective purpose since they have two
dimensional approaches: management by exception where leader where leaders can employ
corrective measures when things seem wrong and out of control and contingent reward meaning
that a leader can make use of promotions and rewards as a way of getting desired results from a
team of employees.
Laissez-faire leadership
With this kind of leadership approach, leaders don’t make decisions. They are always
reluctant in taking actions and avoiding situations, and therefore this exposes them to high risks
of encountering problems. Such leaders do not provide feedback to their employees nor do they
reward or motivate them. This is many cases dissatisfy the employees leading to unproductive
employees and job inefficiency as well.
Research design
For our research purpose, the most appropriate research design will be quantitative
method. We shall consider a sampling of data in the research as well. The best sampling method
for our research will be a random sampling method. This will enable us to represent the whole
population of manager/ leaders and the employees who have been employed in the organization
for a minimum period of two years. A quantitative research design will give room for broader
study since we are concerned with the greater number of leaders and more so employees.
Therefore, there is a need for generalized results as well as an allowance for greater objectivity
and most accurate results. The design will also provide some data summaries that support a

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generalization about the phenomena under study which in this case is the Woolworth company
leaders and employees as well.
We intend to use the questionnaires method for collecting data from the Woolworth
limited company to collect data concerning the effect of leadership on the job performance. We
intend to use 1200 people for the research. To get their contact details for both employees and
their leaders, we shall seek questionnaires that were used in the previous year to carry out any
similar or related research as a way of ensuring validity. Names and conducts will be sources
from those questionnaires together with their contact emails. Questionnaires shall be distributed
in both paper form and online method to reach the sampled population. After data collection, the
data shall be keyed into a computer for storage and analysis with the help of SPSS and SEM.
Some structural models will be conducted to help to test the generated hypotheses.
Research tools
1. Questionnaire
The most suitable primary data collection method is to issue a questionnaire. The
questionnaires have been designed with a five-point Likert scale to provide the sampled
respondents ease when answering the questions. The scale takes the format of 1) strongly
disagree, 2) disagree), 3) neither agree nor disagree, 4) agree and 5) strongly agree. The
following are the questions and design for the questionnaire.
Question Strongly
disagree
disagree Neither agree
nor disagree
agree Strongly
agree
Do you get
involved in
the decision-
making

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process
Does your
leader access
you
Do you get
consulted
before plans
are
implemented,
or plans are
made
Are
employees
rewarded
after better
performance
Are there
some
leadership
barriers you
face
Can you
express your
view within
the
Woolworth
company
meeting
Ethical considerations
Due to some ethical consideration and issues pertaining privacy of the employees and leaders,
we have considered approaching the Woolworth limited company human resource managers. We
have come up with a consensual agreement that will ensure that no complication relating to
breach of privacy act will arise. We did this before conducting our study. Also, it was considered
that these questionnaires be distributed both manually and online to avoid interfering with the
company’s normal program. The manual distribution will be conducted during the tea break

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session and lunch break sessions for only two days. Confidentiality was guaranteed to the
respondents to avoid fear for accurate response and loss of a job or other related complications.

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References
Bass, BM, and R Bass. The Bass handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications.
Simon and Schuster press, 2009.
Cherry, Kendra. "what is democratic leadership." very well mind journal, 2018: 3.
Daniel, G. The new leaders. Little brown: Lancaster press, 2002.
Dininni, Jeanne. "management theory of Warren Bennis." Business, 2017: 5.
gabzhalilov, Askar. "does leadership style affect employee work performance ." the market mogul, 2015:
1-22.
Heineman, R L, and M T Gresham. "the effects of changes like work on compensation." leadership, 2000:
21.
Mohammed, Hussein, and Hagi Hassan. "The Impact of Leadership Styles on Employees’ performance in
Telecom Engineering companies." Australian Journal of basic and applied sciences, 2015: 1-10.
Moorad, Zeenat. "why Woolworths is getting whipped." business live, 2017: 1-8.
Nebel, E C. "Motivation, leadership and employee performance." Sage journal, 2003: 11.
Woolworth group. About us. 2018. https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/ (accessed August 9, 2018).