Abstract:
Numbers of factors affect the employee morale. Among them leadership style is
important. There was a contradictory argument regarding the connection between
employee morale and the leadership styles. According to some researchers, morale of
the workers under autocratic or task-oriented leaders is significantly less than other
styles of leadership. Another group argued that higher level of employee morale could
be expected through participative or people-concerned leadership style. This study is an
endeavor to examine whether there is a connection between leadership style and the
employee morale, and then decide the appropriate style of leadership to improve
employee morale in an organization. An empirical study of a sample of the managers
and employees of private sector banking organizations in Sri Lanka was conducted to
examine the link between the employee morale and leadership styles. Amongst the
leaders, there was none who practiced pure autocratic or participative style of
leadership. The findings concluded that the leadership style of any manager cannot be
identified as a separate independent behaviour within a continuum of autocratic and
participative or people- concerned and task-concerned behaviour. Instead of concerning
more on a single type of behaviour, a manager can give high concern simultaneously for
the both styles and this behaviour seems to have recorded high employee morale. Most
probably, a satisfactory level of employee morale can be achieved through balancing the
necessity to get the work done by showing a greater concern for achieving tasks while
practicing a same level or somewhat high concern on employees.
