The impact of leadership styles on employee engagement in a large retail organisation in the Western Cape

Abstract

To gain further insight, the purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of leadership styles, particularly the impact of transformational and transactional leadership on employee engagement. Within a business context, transformational leaders are those “extraordinary” individuals that have the ability to capture their employees’ attention, intellectually stimulate them and strategically align them with the vision and mission of the organisation. Contrary to this, is transactional leadership which is basically an exchange relationship between the leader and employee whereby the leader exchanges rewards and/or incentives for performance. Both styles of leadership are instrumental in engaging employees within the organisation, although a plethora of literature suggests that transformational leadership impacts more significantly on employee engagement (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004).