Perceived Leadership-Behaviour And Personality Factors As Predictors Of Job-Behaviours Among Nigerian Workers

Abstract

The study examined perceived leadership-behaviour and personality factors as predictors of job-behaviours among Nigerian workers. Employees’ perceptions constituted the central features of a model underlying the study, as they were believed to be related to the individual level of change outcomes. A sample of 8 work group comprising 504 employees (made up of 285 males and 219 females) drawn from human service oriented private and public sectors participated in the study. Precisely, 249 and 255 of these workers were drawn from private sector and public sector organizations, respectively. Participants’ job tenures ranged from 1-18 years, with a mean tenure of 8.4 years and their age ranged between 24 to 59 years. The study was carried out in two stages, using survey design. The first phase was the development and validation of a leadership-behaviour description scale (LBD-35). The second stage involved the determination of the relationships among perceived leadership-behaviour, personality factors and job-behaviours. It was hypothesized that (i) LBD-35 will be reliable and valid. (ii) Worker’s perceptions of leadershipbehaviours will significantly predict organisational commitment, organisational involvement and Oganisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB). (iii) Personality factors of extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to experience would significantly predict organisational commitment, job involvement and OCB. The participants responded to LBD-35 (the new instrument), Supervisory Behaviour Description Questionnaire (SBDQ), Big-Five Inventory (BFI), Organisational Commitment Scale (OCS), Job Involvement Scale (JIS), Organisational Citizenship Behaviour Scale (OCBS). The data collected were analyzed using correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis and Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). Result obtained showed that: (i) the newly developed test (LBD-35) was found to be reliable and valid by having high reliability and validity coefficients. (ii) Interpersonal relations and emancipatory leadership-behaviour had significant positive correlations with organisational commitment constructs and OCB. (iii) interpersonal relations significantly contributed 19.3% to the observed variance in organisational commitment. (iv) interpersonal relations and emancipatory leadership-behaviour contributed about 10.9 % of the observed variance in OCB. (v) extroversion and openness to experience correlated positively with OCB (r = .148). (vi) extroversion significantly contributed 22.5% to the observed variance in OCB. (vii) autocratic leadership-behaviour was found to be counter-productive to workers organisational commitment, OCB and organisational involvement, but it is capable of promoting organisational involvement among extroverted workers. (viii) interaction between interpersonal relations and extraversion, as well as interaction between emancipatory leadership-behaviour and extraversion was significant on job involvement and OCB respectively.