The Importance of Leadership in the Grocery Sector

Abstract

Transactional leadership, passive leadership behaviors and especially transformational leadership have received great scholarly attention over the years, and the aim of this thesis is to uncover the effects these leadership styles might have on effectiveness in the grocery sector. The overall research questions for this thesis are; “Do leadership behaviors correlate with effectiveness in grocery stores?” and “Do grocery store managers and their employees score the store managers` leadership behaviors in the same way?” Some scholars uphold that transformational leadership is always superior to transactional leadership, and that transformational leadership is a universal theory. Previous studies have found that the transformational leadership style had positive and significant effects on followers` effectiveness, willingness to produce extra effort and overall performance. To gain the necessary data in this study I have carried out a quantitative research method consisting of 15 participating stores. 15 store managers, 2 assistant managers and 109 employees filled out the multifactor leadership questionnaire developed by Bass and Avolio (2004). The findings suggested that managers perceived themselves mostly as transformational leaders. How the employees perceived their manager on the other hand, were much more varied, and scores on transactional leadership were almost as high as the scores given on transformational leadership. The findings in this study suggest that store managers themselves and the employees do not score the store managers` leadership behaviors in the same way. On the other hand, the sample does not offer a conclusion on whether there is a stronger tendency of overestimation or underestimation, as this varies from store to store. According to the results obtained from the managers, passive leadership behaviors and transactional leadership showed a stronger relationship with effectiveness than what transformational leadership did. The results collected from the employees showed stronger significance for the relationship between the three leadership styles and effectiveness than what the results from the managers did. Lastly, results from the managers showed no significant relationships between the key figures and the three leadership styles. results from the employees on the other hand, showed a positive and significant relationship between transformational leadership style and turnover per labor hour with a correlation of 0,62. The results from the employees also showed a positive correlation between transformational leadership and employee absence with a correlation of 0,58. Although the differences in how managers score themselves and how the employees score them makes it a little more difficult to reach a final conclusion, it is fair to say that leadership behaviors correlate with effectiveness in grocery stores.