Leadership dimensions, employee engagement and job performance of selected consumer-packaged goods firms

Abstract

Annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person which is an indicator of decent work and economic growth (SDG 8) is a measure of labour productivity, giving information on the quality and efficiency of human capital in the production process. This study examined the leadership dimensions, employee engagement and job performance. The study reviewed necessary academic literature with theoretical foundations. The study was descriptive and involved the distribution of questionnaire to 422 staff working in selected functioning Consumer-Packaged Goods (CPGs) Firms in Nigeria. Using Partial Least Square (PLS) path modelling method, the findings of the study showed that the three factors, namely leadership dimensions (Transformational, Transactional and Lassez faire), employee engagement and job performance interact and interconnect with each other in a holistic way. The model reveals that there is significant and moderate relationship between transformational leadership (r = 0.466, P-value < 0.05), transactional leadership (r = 0.392, P-value < 0.05) and employee engagement. A reverse relationship was observed between Lassez faire (r = −0.311, P-value < 0.05) and employee engagement. This implies that increase in Lassez faire attitude of the leaders will ultimately lead to decrease in the job performance. On the contrary, job engagement and performance showed a significant relationship at r = 0.223 (P-value < 0.05). It was concluded that transformational leadership rather than transactional and Lasseiz faire leadership is more effective in attaining higher levels of workers’ performance. Hence, managers of the selected firms have a major role position to influence the behaviour of the employees, employee engagement and job performance which will then influence real GDP per person employed used as a measure of labour productivity in SDG 8.

Keywords:

• leadership
• employee engagement
• behaviour
• performance

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

Organisational leadership style cannot be overemphasized because goals must be achieved through people. Effective leadership approach is needful especially in this global competitive environment. In service and people-oriented organisations like the manufacturing industry, their success largely depends on the role of leaders as they influence employees’ behaviours, attitudes and emotions including the manner in which they relate with customers. Surprisingly, the performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria over the years has been declining, hence the need to research into what could be responsible for this. The study strongly believes that training, learning and knowledge development play important roles in the relationship between leadership dimensions and performance. With the fast rate of technological changes in today’s competitive market, leaders need knowledge development and training methods to provide skills in group decision making and problem solving in order to foster job engagement and performance of employees in the manufacturing industry.

1. Introduction

In a country economic growth can be attributed to many factors, including rise in employment and more productive work by those employed. Businesses play a key role in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) #8. This SGDs goal #8 emphasised that the success of any organisation depends on its ability to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, comprehensive and effective employment and modest work for all (United Nations Global Compact, 2017). The manufacturing sector is the hub of a vibrant national economy. To be relevant, the sector must acquire the reputation of effectively harnessing and processing of available raw materials into valuable finished products for meaningful contribution to the GDP (Ana et al., 2014; Olanipekun et al., 2015), employment generation (Deribe, 2016; Onakoya et al., 2018) and rapid national industrialization (Chitra & Munivenkatappa, 2017; Chris & Abeh, 2016). Surprisingly, the sector has not attained this competitive status in Nigeria because apart from dearth of supportive infrastructural facilities, it is still exposed to leadership dilemma bothering on deficient strategies in stakeholders’ relationship management, which also affects the optimal sectoral performance.

The importance of manufacturing sector has prompted many nations to accord more recognition to the sector due to its huge potential for high contribution to national GDP, employment generation, innovation stimulation, improvements of standard of living and as a catalyst for rapid industrialization, among others (Sasmita & Manoj, 2018; Sunita et al., 2015). However, despite sectoral importance of manufacturing to national growth, it is of serious concern that manufacturing firms in Nigeria and most African countries are still lagging behind in terms of survival and competitive performance. For instance, while the manufacturing sector with its huge potentials has consistently served as a source of huge contribution to other nations’ GDPs, this is yet to be the case in Nigeria despite being the largest economy in Africa.

To further buttress the relative low performance rating of Nigerian manufacturers, the World Bank National Accounts Data (2017) report showed that manufacturing contributed only 9% to Nigeria’s GDP in 2016, which is behind the manufacturing sector’s contributions in other African countries. It was also observed that 322 manufacturing firms closed down in Nigeria between 2009 and 2014 (African Development Report, September 2019); 196 manufacturing companies shut down between 2015 and 2017 (Afolabi & Laseinde, 2019). Various issues including, environmental pollution, customers’ dissatisfaction, low productivity and incessant labour unrests, operational inefficiency, regulatory sanctions, alleged poor welfare packages and hostile community-industry relationships (Ohunakin et al., 2016; O. Salau et al., 2020) have continued to generate discussions on the need for effective leadership style and engagement in the manufacturing industry. In fact, Robert et al. (2015) are of the opinion that the manufacturing firms have over the years failed to adequately address most of the issues identified above.

With a rising consumer class, this is a chance for many multinationals to satisfy the requirements of the increasing consumer class with consumer-packaged goods (CPG). Surprisingly, the performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria over the years has been declining. According to Nwosu et al. (2013), Simbo et al. (2012) and Vilasini et al. (2012), poor performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria is attributed to incessant power outage and inadequate trainings (O.P. Salau et al., 2018), poor maintenance of machines and machineries, low motivation (Ghadi et al., 2013), leadership deficiency, technology upgrade and poor safety mechanisms. As a result of the importance of job performance in the competitive service industry, it is essential to determine the predictor(s) and explore new insights into how and which leadership dimension enhances job performance of employees’ significantly in Nigeria manufacturing sector.

Deribe (2016) however identified three dimensions of leadership as transformational, transactional and laissez-faire. Warrilow (2012) defined Transformational leadership as the leadership that generates positive change for followers by taking care of one another’s interests and acting in the interests of the whole group. The transactional leadership style is also known as organisational management, which tends to focus on supervisory, organisational and group performance roles (Moses, 2018). It can be described as a leadership style that encourages its followers’ adherence through rewards and penalties (Adeniji et al., 2018; Odumeru & Ifeanyi, 2013; Paracha et al., 2012; Sarminah, 2012). Laissez-faire leadership style also called the “hands-off” style is when managers offer little or no direction to employees (Gray & Williams, 2012). Gopal and Chowdhury (2014) stated that laissez-faire leadership is a separate type of leadership where employees are fully responsible for determining their goals, making decisions and also resolving problems on their own.

Extant literature have justified leadership and supervisor role as the key drivers to employee engagement (Chris & Abeh, 2016; Ghadi et al., 2013; Hilde et al., 2017; Sasmita & Manoj, 2018). Obviously, employee engagement is pivotal to the success of any organisation in today’s dynamic and competitive environment (Marcus & Gopinath, 2017; Chitra & Munivenkatappa, 2017; Zhang et al., 2014). Kahn (1990) first used the word employee engagement in 1990 and defined it as the process of harnessing members of the organisation to their roles and encouraging workers to cognitively, physically and emotionally express themselves throughout role performance. Hence, this study sought to examine the moderating role of employee engagement on leadership dimension and job performance.

2. Methods and materials

The quantitative approach was deployed in the quest to attain the objectives of the research and answer the research questions. Specifically, this study used the descriptive research design to facilitate detailed and credible assessment of the relationship between and among variables for the study. The study population for this paper is all the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) listed manufacturers of consumer goods product in Nigeria. The selected firms are at least ten years old in business; have NSE-submitted annual financial reports for the last five years (2013–2019) and their stocks have been actively capped on the stock exchange without any break in the last 5 years minimum.

This study employed both primary and secondary source of data gathering. The primary data source was through the administration of questionnaire research instrument to respondents that were made up of the senior staff (top management, middle management and lower management members) of the firms (Food Production and Beverages, Packaged goods and Clothing, Automobiles and Electronics). Trained research assistants were employed to support the researcher in the distribution and collection of the research instruments. Email and phone calls were made to follow up on respondents’ timely feedbacks.

2.1. Data measurement and analysis procedure

Questionnaire was sectioned into A and B and used to gather data regarding the effect of leadership dimensions, employee engagement and job performance. Section A deals with Demographic data of the respondents while Section B captures research data for leadership dimensions, employee engagement and job performance. The questionnaire adopted a five scale Likert format to capture the exact level of consideration and responses to the probing item. The questionnaire items were modified and adopted standard questions based on items from the validated survey works of previous scholars in similar subject areas. The leadership dimensions’ items were from (Ana et al., 2014; Anastasia, 2018; Deribe, 2016; Lianying et al., 2018) and employee engagement were also adapted from previous studies (Khan et al., 2016; Marcus & Namitha, 2017; Sasmita & Manoj, 2018; Sunita et al., 2015). Job performance measurements were adopted and adapted from (Isabel et al., 2019; Olanipekun et al., 2015; Simbo et al., 2012; Thomas, 2017; Zohra et al., 2018).

This study used composite reliability, average variance extracted coefficients and Cronbach’s Alpha to test the internal consistency and homogeneity of the measures of the constructs in the study (Hair et al., 2006). In the overall, the Mean Cronbach’s alpha of the constructs used to measure leadership dimensions, employee engagement and job performance, affirmed that the constructs were reliable. This was so having scaled the set minimum value of 0.70 that was necessary to indicate that the instrument was both internally consistent and reliable. As in the test of validity, the Pilot study conducted for this work also served to assure the reliability of the instrument. The method of analysis involved both descriptive and inferential statistics. At the descriptive level, frequency distributions were used including charts. At the inferential level, four hypotheses were formulated to test whether transformational leadership, Laissez faire leadership style have a positive effect on Job Performance. And employee engagement has no moderating effect on the relationship between Leadership dimensions and Job Performance. Partial Least Square (PLS) path modelling method and inferential statistics were used for the test.

2.2. Ethical consideration

The study sought approval through Covenant University business management ethical review committee. All information was treated with confidentiality. Informed consent from the research participants was without inducement. To ensure transparency, respondent result was not altered irrespective of any situation.

3. Results

Under this section the result from the analysis are presented. It commences with questions that sought responses on respondents’ personal data with the aid of a questionnaire based on the study objective. The average staff strength in the selected manufacturing firms was 8607. Using the Barlett et al. (2001) table chart, a sample size of 467 which was approximated to 500 was derived and distributed accordingly as recommended by Israel (2013). First, Table 1 displayed the distribution and retrieval of the questionnaire.

Table 1. Questionnaire distribution and retrieval

S/N	Firms’ Classifications	Coded	Average Staff Strength		Total Distributed	Total Retrieved	Total (%) Retrieved
1	Food Products and Beverages	#1	3800		220	188	85.5%
2	Packaged Goods and Clothing	#2	2680		156	131	84.0%
3	Automobiles and Electronics	#3	2127		124	103	83.1%
Total				8607	500	422	84.4%

Source: Author’s Computation

The data obtained for this study were presented using tables specifying relevant information on the amount of questionnaire distributed and retrieved from the respondents. 500 questionnaire copies were dispensed to employees of selected manufacturers of consumer goods product and only 422 copies representing 84.4% were retrieved; while 78 representing 15.6% were not retrieved. This response rate was considered good and 422 questionnaire copies were found statistically valid and usable for this study.

Table 2 demonstrated the demographic characteristics of the respondents. They include; gender, age, educational status, job position and years spent in the selected manufacturing firms.

Table 2. Demographic characteristics of respondents

Demographic Variables		Coded Firms			Total
		#1	#2	#3
Gender:	Male	79	95	91	265 (62.8%)
	Female	49	50	58	157 (37.2%)
Age:	Under 25	20	15	18	53 (12.6%)
	25–35 years	41	73	70	184 (43.6%)
	36–45 years	50	43	49	142 (33.6%)
	46 years and above	17	14	12	43 (10.2%)
Marital status	Single	41	48	54	143 (33.9%)
	Married	78	86	87	251 (59.5%)
	Others	9	11	8	28 (6.6%)
Educational Qualification	Diploma	40	40	45	125 (29.6%)
	Bachelor’s Degree	69	78	80	227 (53.8%)
	Master’s Degree	14	23	20	57 (13.5%)
	Doctorate Degree	5	4	4	13 (3.1%)
Position	Director	4	6	6	16 (3.8%)
	Senior Manager	10	10	12	32 (7.6%)
	Supervisors/Managers	22	24	20	66 (15.6%)
	Others	92	105	111	308 (73%)
Years Spent in the firm(s)	Less than 5 years	32	36	34	102 (24.1%)
	5–10 years	58	78	80	216 (51.2%)
	11–15 years	28	22	25	75 (17.8%)
	16 years and above	10	9	10	29 (6.9%)

Source: Authors’ Computation

The table displays the distribution of respondents’ gender. 422 respondents were captured out of which 265 of them are males and 157 are females. The table reveals that a bulk of the respondents captured for this work fell in ages range of 25–35 years, and followed by 36–45 years. Further, the respondents’ marital status is displayed and a large percentage of the respondents are married. In the same vein, the table reveals that a substantial percentage of the respondents captured are HND/BSc. graduates. From their position in the organisation, it can be seen that the selection covers various categories of individuals with a reasonable length of experience as displayed in the table above. A cross tabulation of the consumer good firms on leadership dimensions, employee engagement and job performance was conducted using frequency distribution and the result was displayed in Table 3.

Table 3. Mean and standard deviation of variables based on the business sector

s/n	Variables	Sub-variables	Business Sector
			Food Production and Beverages (N = 188)		Packaged goods and Clothing (N = 131)		Automobiles and Electronics (N = 103)
			Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
1	Transformational Leadership	TFL1	4.267	0.774	4.655	0.544	4.286	0.841
		TFL2	3.933	0.729	4.035	0.892	4.143	0.972
		TFL3	3.333	0.909	4.035	0.852	3.286	0.791
		TFL4	3.500	0.849	3.793	0.963	2.714	0.791
		TFL5	3.600	0.759	3.931	0.947	3.429	0.890
TFL Average Mean			3.727	0.804	4.090	0.840	3.572	0.857
2	Transactional Leadership	TSL1	4.267	0.729	4.448	0.564	4.143	0.646
		TSL2	4.267	0.513	4.483	0.566	4.286	0.707
		TSL3	4.267	0.513	4.586	0.560	4.286	0.456
		TSL4	4.600	0.555	4.621	0.613	4.714	0.456
		TSL5	4.100	0.599	4.345	0.544	3.857	0.646
TSL Average Mean			4.300	0.582	4.497	0.569	4.257	0.582
3	Lasseiz Faire	LF1	4.067	0.681	4.069	0.787	4.286	0.456
		LF2	4.433	0.560	4.552	0.564	4.429	0.500
		LF3	3.600	0.802	3.828	0.700	3.714	0.707
		LF4	3.667	0.701	3.655	0.802	3.857	0.646
		LF5	4.200	0.911	4.379	0.717	4.571	0.500
LF Average Mean			3.993	0.731	4.097	0.714	4.171	0.562
4	Employee Engagement	EENG1	4.200	0.794	4.483	0.566	4.286	0.707
		EENG2	4.433	0.617	4.517	0.501	4.429	0.500
		EENG3	3.567	0.992	3.897	0.997	3.714	0.707
		EENG4	3.967	0.797	4.310	0.749	4.143	0.354
		EENG5	3.567	0.885	3.931	0.947	3.429	0.736
		EENG6	3.433	0.922	3.897	0.887	3.286	0.641
		EENG7	4.600	0.491	4.379	0.553	4.143	0.869
		EENG8	3.933	0.816	4.000	0.697	4.143	0.847
		EENG9	4.267	0.630	4.310	0.749	3.857	0.646
		EENG10	3.667	0.791	3.966	0.811	3.714	0.456
EENG Average Mean			3.963	0.774	4.169	0.746	3.914	0.646
5	Job Performance	JP1	3.900	0.652	4.035	0.802	4.429	0.736
		JP2	3.700	0.587	4.069	0.717	3.857	0.646
		JP3	3.533	0.887	3.448	0.815	3.000	0.540
		JP4	3.733	0.575	3.655	0.922	3.571	0.736
		JP5	3.367	0.659	3.379	0.999	3.286	0.707
		JP6	3.367	0.797	3.759	0.859	3.571	0.736
		JP7	3.600	0.665	3.897	0.663	3.571	0.736
JP Average Mean			3.600	0.689	3.749	0.825	3.612	0.691

Note: Blue represents firms with the highest mean values while Red represent firms with the least mean values

Source: Author’s Computation

By and large, it is established by majority of the respondents that the selected organisations adopted various leadership dimension that promotes employee engagement and performance. Packaged goods and Clothing firms came up with the most profound transformational and transactional leadership style (mean value of 4.090; 4.497), followed by Food Production and Beverages (mean value of 3.727; 4.300), while Automobiles and Electronics had the least mean value of 3.727 and 4.257 respectively. The result shows that all the various categories of consumer packaged goods firms have strong acceptable transformational and transactional leadership dimensions. For Lasseiz faire, Automobiles and Electronics had the highest mean value of 4.171, followed by Packaged goods and Clothing firms (mean value of 4.097), while Food Production and Beverages had the least mean value of 3.993.

In the same vein, Packaged goods and Clothing firms emerged with the highest mean value for employee engagement and job performance (mean value of 4.169; 3.749), followed by Food Production and Beverages (mean value of 3.963; 3.600) and Automobiles and Electronics had the least mean value of 3.914 and 3.612 respectively. The result also indicates that all the various categories of consumer packaged goods firms have fairly acceptable ratings for employee engagement and job performance.

The use of Partial Least Square (PLS) path modelling method was adopted to support the descriptive statistics and test the hypotheses. Wold (1982) developed the PLS path modelling method. In essence, in terms of weight vectors the PLS algorithm is a sequence of regressions. The weight vectors gotten at convergence meet fixed point equations (for a broad analysis of these equations, see Dijkstra, 2010) as presented in Figure 1 to 6 respectively.

Figure 1. Inner model (path co-efficient); outer model (outer weights/loadings).

Figure 2. Inner model (path co-efficient and p-values); outer model (outer weights/loadings and P-values).

Figure 3. Inner model (path co-efficient and P-values); outer model (outer weights/loadings and T-values).

Based on the embedded model outcomes in Figures 1, 2 and 3, it is obvious that the three factors, namely leadership dimensions, employee engagement and job performance interrelate and interconnect with each other in a holistic way. The model reveals that a significant and moderate relationship exists between transformational leadership (r = 0.466, P-value < 0.05), transactional leadership (r = 0.392, P-value < 0.05) and employee engagement. A reverse relationship was observed between Lassez faire (r = −0.311, P-value < 0.05) and employee engagement. This implies that increase in Lassez faire attitude of the leaders will ultimately lead to decrease in the job performance. On the other hand, job engagement and performance showed a significant relationship at r = 0.223 (P-value < 0.05). R-Square is the fraction of variance in the dependent variable that can be projected from the independent variable. This value showed that 37.7% variance of employee engagement is explained by the style of the leaders. While 22.9% of job performance is explained by both leadership styles and employee engagement.

From the Lassez Faire model, it could be inferred that delegation (r = 0.145, p < 0.05) has the greatest statistical significance on employee engagement while avoidance (r = 0. 051, p > 0.05) and free reign (r = 0.145, p < 0.05) were insignificant. From the Transactional model, it could be inferred that contingent rewards (r = 0.288, p < 0.05) has the greatest statistical significance on employee engagement, followed by contingent punishment (r = 0.143, p > 0.05) and management exception (active) (r = 0.132, p < 0.05). From the Transformation model, it could be inferred that inspirational motivation (r = 0.435, p < 0.05) has the greatest statistical significance on employee engagement; followed by intellectual stimulation (r = 0.202, p > 0.05) and charisma (r = 0.097, p < 0.05); while individual consideration (r = 0.078, p > 0.05) was insignificant.

Furthermore, leadership theories affirm that the styles of the leaders have something to do with the engagement needed by the employees to be effective for the organisation and the individuals concerned, whether in individual capacity or group. Accordingly, employee engagement was the primary reason for attaining sustainable working organizations that are essential to attaining long-term efficiency. The findings pointed that many inputs must be regarded in order to fulfil the necessity of greater job engagement and performance, including task definition, goal clarity and diversity management. This finding is supported by the correlation co-efficient as shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Correlation co-efficient table

Variables	Original Sample (O)	Sample Mean (M)	Standard Deviation	T Statistics	P Values
Avoidance—> Laissez Faire Leadership	0.051	0.043	0.075	0.681	0.496
Charisma—> Transformational Leadership	0.097	0.098	0.037	2.615	0.009
Contingent punishment—> Transactional Leadership	0.136	0.135	0.048	2.825	0.005
Contingent rewards—> Transactional Leadership	0.284	0.286	0.043	6.601	0.000
Delegation—> Laissez Faire Leadership	0.145	0.144	0.052	2.787	0.006
Employee engagement—> Job Performance	0.223	0.221	0.048	4.695	0.000
Free Reign—> Laissez Faire Leadership	0.033	0.050	0.046	0.722	0.471
Individual consideration—> Transformational Leadership	0.078	0.077	0.038	2.030	0.043
Inspirational motivation—> Transformational Leadership	0.435	0.438	0.038	11.545	0.000
Intellectual stimulation—> Transformational Leadership	0.202	0.201	0.039	5.218	0.000
Laissez Faire Leadership—> Employee engagement	−0.311	−0.311	0.045	6.879	0.000
Laissez Faire Leadership—> Job Performance	0.221	0.223	0.064	3.441	0.001
Mgt Exception Active–> Transactional Leadership	0.133	0.138	0.044	3.039	0.002
Mgt Exception Passive—> Transactional Leadership	0.135	0.141	0.043	3.098	0.002
Transactional Leadership—> Employee engagement	0.392	0.393	0.037	10.680	0.000
Transformational Leadership—> Employee engagement	0.466	0.467	0.048	9.787	0.000
R Square
Matrix	R square		R square Adjusted
Employee engagement	0.377		0.374
Job Performance	0.229		0.224
Laissez Faire Leadership	0.031		0.026
Transactional Leadership	0.222		0.216
Transformational Leadership	0.369		0.365

4. Discussion

The model reveals that a significant relationship exists among the variables. Table 4 provides the total effects by demonstrating which measures of the independent variable (leadership dimensions) and moderating variable (employee engagement) are most closely related to the dependent variable (job performance). It can therefore be concluded that leadership dimensions and employee engagement have significant effect on job performance. This is consistent with prior studies that state that job performance can be enhanced when leaders use democratic tactics to solving problems and involving employees in identifying the problems and finding solutions to the complex issues (Ohunakin et al., 2016; Thomas, 2017; Vijay et al., 2016; Zohra et al., 2018). This tallies with the finding of Tio (2014) which investigated the relationship between leadership dimensions and employee engagement. The result of this current study also corroborates with findings of previous researchers like (Mohammad et al., 2016; Moses, 2018; Vikas & Ravis, 2011) that investigated the link between employee engagement and performance. Research carried out by Kung’U (2011) in a firm in Kenya point out that there is a relationship between participative style and performance which was enhanced by reward systems such as salary and benefits, recognition and promotion. Sharmilee and Muhammad (2016) in South Africa discovered a positive relationship between the participative style of management and the employees’ performance.

Understanding the various leadership styles helps a manager to know the best leadership style to adopt for the organization. In sectors like manufacturing, they need a good style such as transactional, laissez-faire style of leadership. Empirical evidences have shown that leadership behaviours have an influence on employee performance (Lianying et al., 2018; Marcus & Namitha, 2017; Maria & Álvaro, 2019). This suggests leaders that are strong overshadow weak leaders, also transformational style of leadership brings about greater performance than transactional style of leadership. Organizational behaviour has recognized transformational style of leadership as the most appropriate for contemporary organizations. The new business environment needs innovative type of leadership style that enables work and increases performance of employees so as to increase organizational performance, objectives. Also, the Canadian financial sector reveal that transformational leadership is related strongly with greater worker satisfaction and organizational performance more than transactional leadership

Ohunakin et al. (2016), Maria and Álvaro (2019) and Tims et al. (2011) supported the findings that transformational leadership rather than transactional leadership has more effect in realizing greater levels of workers’ performance. Underneath transformational style of leaders, it is likely employees get personal consideration from the leader. Consequently, they respond by supporting the leader’s goals and objectives and perform very well. Therefore, transformational leaders can improve the quality of leader. The various literature on leadership and workers’ performance can be seen across industry and countries. The indication of the effect of leadership style on the performance of employee can vary. The literature reviewed is steady in proposing that transformational as well as transactional leadership styles are related significantly to the performance of employee and transformational styles of leadership has a great effect than that of the transactional leadership style.

5. Conclusion and recommendations

The study concludes that leadership dimensions and employee engagement have significant effect on job performance. Engaging leadership dimension helps in motivating employees, improving their level of involvement, enhancing the level of innovation and performance. The study also concludes that transformational leadership rather than transactional and Lasseiz faire leadership has more effect in attaining higher levels of workers’ performance. With transformational style of leadership, employees are likely to receive personal attention from the leader. Subsequently, they tend respond by being supportive to the leader’s goals and objectives and performing very well. Because businesses play a central role in advancing SDG 8, as they account for the majority of GDP in most countries as well as the majority of jobs, companies can address their own impacts on employees and workers in their value chains to enhance job performance and boost labour productivity. Hence, managers need to study the situations and adopt various leadership styles so as to enhance the existing level of motivation, job engagement and performance. Managers of the selected firms have a major role position to influence the behaviour of the employees and understanding the various leadership styles helps a manager to know the paramount leadership style to adopt for the organization.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Covenant University for giving full sponsorship of this research work through its Centre for Research, Innovation and Discovery (CU-CRID).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Anthonia Adeniji

Anthonia Adeniji (Ph.D) is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at Covenant University, Nigeria. She has published in several scholarly journals and a member of Professional bodies including NIM, CIPM.

Adewale Osibanjo

Adewale Osibanjo (Ph.D) is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at Covenant University, Nigeria. He is an astute scholar and reviewer to several Scopus Index Journal.

Odunayo Salau

Odunayo Salau (Ph.D) is a Lecturer and Researcher in the Department of Business Management, Covenant University.

Tolulope Atolagbe

Tolulope Atolagbe (Ph.D) is a Lecturer in the Department of Business Management, Covenant University, Nigeria.

Oluwatunmise Ojebola

Oluwatunmise Ojebola is a Ph.D student at Covenant University, Nigeria. He has published in several international journals.

Abisola Osoko

Abisola Osoko is a Ph.D student at Covenant University, Nigeria. She has served as Research Assistant in the University.

Remilekun Akindele

Remilekun Akindele is a Graduate student at Covenant University, Nigeria. She is a Research Assistant in the University.

Ogheneofejiro Edewor

Ogheneofejiro Edewor is a Graduate student at Covenant University, Nigeria. She is a Research Assistant in the University.