CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Efficient and effective organization performance and productivity is the core target and interest of any business establishment. The efficiency and achievement of any organizational goal must be anchored on certain persons and responsibilities delegated to persons for the purpose of concentration and division of labour benefit. Every organisation, like every team requires leadership. Leadership allows managers to affect employee behaviour in the organisation. Thus, motivated employees are one of the most important results of effective leadership; this mostly translates to higher output for the organization. Leadership is critical to forming and implementing strategy and without it, good strategy does not happen. Good leadership is important for the success of any organization, good leadership is more than just important—it is absolutely critical to the organisation’s success. Achieving organisational goals, however, is not enough to keep employees motivated but helping employees accomplish their own personal and career goals is an important part of their motivation, this is the point Leadership becomes key.. One of the most important of these variables is leadership behavior of supervisors for leadership is seen as the behavior of impressing people in many studies.
Leadership is the process through which an individual tries to influence another individual or a group of individuals to accomplish a goal. Leadership is valued in our culture, especially when it helps to achieve goals that are beneficial to the population, such as the enactment of effective preventive health policies. An individual with leadership qualities can also improve an organization and the individuals in it, whether it be a teacher who works to get better teaching materials and after school programs or an employee who develops new ideas and products and influences others to invest in them.
The behavior of employees in organizational life and their relationship with their jobs are affected by a lot of variables. One of the most important of these variables is leadership behavior of supervisors for leadership is seen as the behavior of impressing people in many studies. It has also become clear that organizational commitment has important implications for employees and organizations through various studies by researchers. Bennett and Durkin (2000) stated that the negative effects associated with a lack of employee commitment include absenteeism and turnover.
Employees are bent on acting in such manner as they have seen their boss or superior imply. The activities of employee is the major determinant of performance and output because an improved attitude towards work and toward one responsibility and assignment will transform into the person’s ability to either perform effectively or not.
It could be observed that leadership and management envisages deeply into what the organization can achieve if the quality of recognition is accorded to them. Leadership has been propounded to include the sources of influence that are built into a position in an organizational hierarchy. These include organizationally sanctioned rewards, and punishments, authority, as well as referent and expert power katz and kahn 1966. It could be seen however, that subordinates within the organization, through not all seem to enjoy the influence that exists all over and above the organization. Leadership is very essential organization and greatly influences the whole organization because achievements and results occur corollary to the traits being projected by the leader.
In general terms the acts of controlling other people consists uncertainty reduction ,which entails making the kind of choice that permits the organization to proceed towards its objective despite various kinds of internal and external variables. The effectiveness of leadership has some characteristics, which include forceful threats, a complete assertion of authority to the subordinates, and a derived, and situational responsibility. Note that in the society today, not only the presence of rewards (positive and negative), or the incentive appraisal could induce productivity but the feeling of belongingness. Improper leadership qualities within the organization have a negative impact on the subordinates as well as the achievement of the organizational objective. An organization that has growth and forward looking has a good leadership and vis a vis a bad or deteriorating organization has a bad leadership. Leadership is always related to the situation. There is a growing awareness that is a continuous interaction between the factors presents in any given situation, including for example, the personal characteristics of the leader, the tasks, the environment, the technology, the attitudes, motivation and behaviour of the followers and so on.
Hence, in order to be effective, it is critical for managers to influence their subordinates, peers, and superiors to assist and support their proposals, plans, and to motivate them to carry out with their decisions Blickle, (2003). Organization commitment can also increase the creativity in the organizations Sousa & Coelho, (2011). However, organizational commitment is one of strong determinant of success towards employees for the better performance of the organization, which is highlighted various times in the past literature Chew & Chan, (2008) Das, (2002). The behavioral status of the employees in any company is occasioned and influenced by the leadership behavior and life style, this transcends into productivity level and performance.
Another way of viewing leadership is to acknowledge what people value in individuals that are recognized as leaders. Most people can think of individuals they consider being leadersTherefore, these contradictory findings about the role of leadership in organisational goal attainment suggest that there is more need to study the role of leadership in organizational performance. Especially, Wang Tsuil, and Xin 2011 suggest that there is need to study more the role of leadership in organizational performance or goal attainment because of the limited but contradictory results from previous studies. Further, much of prior research has focused on the role of leadership in the next of restaurants (e.g. Vanderslice 1988), and education institutes (Bensimon 1989; Birnbaum 1990; Neuman 1992; Youngs& King 2002; Weinberg &McDemott 2002). Therefore, there is a limited understanding about the role of leadership on organizational performance in the context of housing sector. Housing sector is getting more and more importance in recent years as Government/Firms are directing their attention towards housing delivery to her citizens to enhance economic development and welfare of citizens. Therefore, the motivation of present study is to investigate the role of leadership in attaining organizational goal in the context of housing sector.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Over the years, there has been conflicting ideas and conceptions about the effect of leadership style and the behavior of employees towards attaining organizational goals. Leadership includes the ultimate source of power but has that positive ability in persuading other individuals and to be innovative in decision-making. According to Bennis and Nanus,(2013) many organizations are over managed and under led. The difference is crucial, managers are people who do things right, but leaders are people who do the right things always. Problems are bound to occur within every noted organization and decision-making is bound to generate conflicts while initiating policies. Managers are expected to coordinate. Whatever they are doing to achieve organizational goals. In this light, the notion of leadership act are those, which help a grouping meeting those stated objectives (Bavelas 1960).
On the other hand, government institutions generally are seen as never-do-wells compared to private organisations. However, this perception may not be a general phenomenon as there are cases of exceptions. It is all about who leads such government Organisations in question, and in what circumstances? This study wants to look into this organization whether they are doing well or not. Thus, the researcher intends to understudy Federal Mortgage Bank as a Financial Institution that has done well in leadership in recent times.
However, the scholarly ideology and dichotomy on the degree of impact exacted on productivity and employee performance by leadership and organizational behavior remain a national and scholarly contest. Several researchers are of the opinion that leadership style is greatly related to performance while others believe that employee behavior is more related to productivity and performance level of an organization at large. Undisputable, different scholars have different ideas and different perception about organizational behavior and leadership style. Thus, the question remains, which leadership style is best for organizational and employee’s performance maximization? What degree of contribution do leadership styles have on the performance level? Are they positive or negative relationships between the leadership and organizational behavior and employees’performance? To what extent are these claims applicable and feasible in the area of this study? These constitute the major problems that triggered and motivated this study
1.3 Research Objective
The aim of the study was to find out the role of leadership in attaining organizational goals. The main objectives of the study were to find out the concepts and types of leadership and investigate how leaders attain organizational goals in the case of Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria. The research also described the performance of the organization in housing sector because of the recent reformation processes and good leadership qualities. The main purpose of this study is to ascertain the impact of leadership and attainment of organizational goals.
Other specific objectives of this study include:
- To find out the relationship between leadershipand attainment of organizational goals.
- To discover the relationship between leadership style and attainment of organizational goals.
- To ascertain the relationship between leadership behaviorand attainment of organizational goals.
- To indicate the relationship between leadership influence and attainment of organizational goals.
1.4 Research Questions
- What is the relationship between leadership andattainment of organizational goals?
- What is the relationship between leadership style and attainment of organizational goals??
- To what extent does leadership behavior and attainment of organizational goals?
- To what degree does leadership influence affect attainment of organizational goals?
1.5 Hypotheses
H01: There is no significant relationship between leadership and attainment of organizational goals
H02: There is no significant relationship between leadership style and attainment of organizational goals
H03:There is no significant relationship between leadership behaviour and attainment of organizational goals
H04: There is no significant relationship between leadership influence and attainment of organizational goals
1.6 Significance of the study
Every research work is expected to be of relevance to certain persons thus this work will be relevant to the following ;
- To the academia, this work will be relevant as it will constitute a literature of relevance on the topic organizational behavior and leadership.
- It will serve as a working document for firms and business organizations on the type of leadership style to adopt and the implications of employee’s behavior on their performance.
- To further researchers, this work will be adopted as a research material for further studies and reference material.
- This work will highlight various strategies to manage different organizational behaviors since people behave differently.
1.7 Scope and limitation of the study
The area of coverage of this the research work is basically on FEDERAL MORTGAGE BANK ASABA. The project is primary concerned with the impact of leadership and attainment of organizational goals.Ghauri and Gronhaug 2010 suggest that it is very important for academic studies to define the limitations of the study. Therefore, it is important to spell here the limitations of the present study before proceeding further. Firstly,
(a) The present study merely focuses on the role of leadership in the context of housing sector. So, manufacturing/customer service organizations are not part of the current study
(d) Time constraint. In as much as the Open University system affords workers flexibility as to study, it was not always easy balancing work, studies and family. Making the research work a bit challenging thus, affecting the research work in terms of wider coverage and all the likes.
(e) Paucity of materials. This is mostly felt because of the inadequate materials or research work present in relation to the subject matter in Asaba NOUN study Centre.
(f) Information secrecy. The non-compliance and attitude of public servants in the public sector in divulging information was also an impediment to this research work. Other limitations percludes, this study has its limitations which ought to be considered when interpreting the results. The main research design used was surveys of Federal Mortgage bank, Asaba. Whilst surveys are highly useful as a means of collecting data on a large scale, there are limited in that they are cross-sectional, as only correlational data can be collected. As noted by Muijs et al. (2006), issues of expectancy effects and bias exist here as well, as does attributional bias. It is not surprising that the management tend to describe themselves as transformational leaders, whereas the bankers would rate them differently.
The study was based on cross-sectional data which provides a snapshot of the phenomena of interest and do not take into consideration changes over time, unlike longitudinal studies. Thus our data do not permit us to make strong claims about cause and effect relationships. Nonetheless, the language of effects was used throughout as an indication of the nature of the relationships in which the study is interested (Leithwood and Jantzi, 2008). However, cross-sectional designs enable correlations to be identified although they may not aid in explaining why such correlations exist. Data was collected from a large sample size of the federal mortgage bankers in Asaba (72 bankers widely scattered in Asaba were sampled, out of the total of 36 federal mortgage banks in Nigeria, neglecting the thousands' of employees under the employs of federal mortgage banks in Nigeria). Furthermore, supplementary data from newspapers and the central bank of Nigeria was used to complement data from surveys.
1.8 Definition of Terms
The following terms are referred to the understated definition throughout the study.
Employee: An employee contributes labor and expertise to an endeavor of an employer and is usually hired to perform specific duties which are packaged into a job.
Employment: it is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee.
Leadership: It's the process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task'
Management: over the years the philosophical terminology of "management" and "leadership" have, in the organizational context, been used both as organizations: An organization that is established as an instrument or means for achieving defined objectives has been referred to as a formal organization.
Performance: Job performance generally refers to behavior that is expected to contribute to organizational success
