This study followed a cross-sectional and descriptive research design. The study aimed at establishing the relationship between strategic leadership and employee engagement. A simple random sampling design was employed to a sample obtained from one of the leading breweries in Uganda. The findings showed that strategic leadership was indeed evident in the organization. They also revealed that strategic leadership and employee engagement were significantly and positively correlated and that strategic leadership was significant predictor of employee engagement. It was therefore concluded that organizations should invest in training th eir managers in strategic leadership skills to improve on their relations with the subordinates.
The performance and wellbeing of employees in an organization is to an extent dependent on the type of leadership prevailing. The Upper Echelon Theory, one of the major antecedents of Strategic Leadership suggests that an organization is a reflection of the cognitions and values of its top lead [
For example Toni Fourie, the appointed CEO of Ellerine Holdings Ltd. after its acquisition by African Bank Investments Ltd., was able to reverse the company’s declining financial position by sowing a new organizational culture; encouraging innovation and creative thinking, collaborative and participatory engagement. The case concluded that successful organizational transformation is dependent on strategic leaders, who are committed to the vision and are resilient to competitors in turbulent economic conditions [
Employee engagement is referred to as the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role performances [
In Uganda, one of the leading breweries (Nile Breweries) established in 1951 by the Madhivani Group reported a commitment to treating employees with fairness and respect; however they still grappled with the issue of employee engagement evidenced by more than half (52%) the population spending less than 3 years in the organization. Similarly in Ghana, Guinness Ghana Breweries reported a 16% level of super engaged employees in 2007. It was attributed to employee perception of management as not making any deliberate attempt to properly and adequately improving engagement levels [
A number of perspectives attempt to explain strategic leadership. The upper echelon theory argues that organizations are a reflection of its leadership [
The positive agency theory too attempted to explain the action of leaders. It claimed that top executives mainly acted in their own interests as opposed to those of shareholders [
Strategic leadership has also been linked to transformational leadership theory. Boal [
The understanding of strategic leadership is too accentuated by a number of emergent theories. The cognitive complexity perspective that assumes that, once a leader has a high cognitive capacity their ability to receive information, analyze it, interpret it and use it to make decisions is enhanced. Social intelligence perspective facilitates emotional intelligence and discernment in action. It ensures that the values of the organization and interest groups are analogous [
A few scholars have attempted to conceptualize strategic leadership. Strategic leadership is understood as a person’s ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, think strategically and work with others to initiate change that will create a viable future for the organization [
One of the major functions of top executives is to define the mission, vision of the organization [
Involvement of employees ensures that the organization effectively recognizes and utilizes it’s core resources and capabilities. The success of an organization depends on how the leaders make decisions to encourage knowledge sharing and learning through fostering relationships [
To effectively utilize core competencies and capabilities, an organization requires the development of human capital. This involves investment in employees with the necessary skills, knowledge and information to be more involved in organizational activities [
The ability of an organization to respond to complex changing situations depends on the culture. The onus therefore is on strategic leaders to create a culture that is all embracing [
Sustaining a formidable culture requires presence of strategic controls. These controls ensure that work is done according to the guidelines stipulated [
Based on the above conceptualization Boal [
A critical glance at these capacities presents some form of correlation between the two conceptualizations. Absorptive capacity recognizes the need to learn and encourages knowledge sharing, development of human capital through training [
Kahn [
Meaning in work is what every individual seeks to obtain. This means doing something that someone believes in [
When employees do not trust in the process chances of them being engaged are lean. To engage employees organizations need to resort to relational contracts where commitment and trust is gained overtime [
Without much difference from Kahn [
For employees to be engaged they need to be provided with appropriate conditions. Some studies have showed that job resources are positively related to engagement [
Availability of resources contributes to a positive work environment. Research shows that when organizations resources; training, autonomy and technology are available then the service climate is enhanced [
Organizations therefore have a role to play in influencing employee engagement levels. It’s no longer a one way requirement [
The success of an organization is dependent on the decisions its leaders make [
For a strategic leader to be effective it requires that they add charisma to one of their skills [
In a studies carried out by Kontakos [
Trust and integrity in leadership are necessary to create enjoyable relationships. For employees to be engaged it’s important that organizations revert to more relational contracts where commitment and trust is created over time [
This study took a cross sectional and descriptive research design. The population was 260 in a large Breweries company operating in Uganda. A sample of 155 employees was taken as respondents. The sample was determined using the table provided by Krejcie [
Employee Engagement had a number of well established models for measurement; The Work Engagement Scale (WES) [
Our respondents were 86 equaling 58.5% male and 61equivalent 41.5% female. This was important in this analysis as gender dimension will influence both leadership and employee engagement. Another important demographic aspect was marital status in which (80) 54.4% were single and the rest (67) were married employees. We also looked at their age distribution in which the majority (75) were found to be relatively young employees in the 31 - 40 age group, those above 50 years who can be said to be in the late adult category were relatively few (14) counting at 9.5% of the respondents. We noted that a small number (15) of employees (10.2%) had worked for more than 6 years in that organization, depicting that of the total establishment; many had not been engaged with the organization for a long time pointing to serious concerns on leadership among other factors. The respondents were professionals with degree qualifications.
The factor analysis results in the
Results indicated that Capacity to Learn, Capacity to Change, Managerial Wisdom and Strategic Direction are some of the major dimensions of the Strategic leadership in the organizations and they explain about 66.165% of the variable.
Capacity to Learn: Explaining 35.926% of the strategic Leadership Variable, results indicated that this component is dominantly characterized by issues such as investment in the training of human resources, (0.912), promotion of learning by Line Managers through asking challenging questions which encourage learning (0.881) and their encouragement and building of strong relationships among members (0.846). Overall, it was observed that this component needs to be promoted in the company as it has not yet attained satisfactory levels (Mean = 1.891, SD = 0.408).
Capacity to Change: On the capacity to change dimension, it was noted that the dominating issues of this variable had to do with the capacity of Top Management Team to recognize the needs and goals of each units (0.882), the application of appropriate leadership role for interactions with subordinates, peer and superiors by the line managers (0.866) and the establishment of control systems that facilitate flexible and innovative employee behaviors (0.882).
Managerial Wisdom: This component explains 7.809% of the study variable and was dominated by the ability of the Line Managers to show compassion in different situations (0.840) and the use of honesty and integrity when making decisions (0.595). This was followed by the Strategic Direction dimension.
Strategic Direction: This component was characterized by how well the Top Management Team determine the vision of the organization (0.513), making very reasonable action plans which are implementable (0.514), and empowering employees to design strategies to achieve the vision (0.895). With a mean of 2.939 and Standard Deviation of 0.724, it was clear that just like all the other components of the Strategic Leadership variable which had means below 3.00, even the Strategic Direction needs great improvement.
From the above factor analysis results it shows that employees were more affected by the strategic leadership dimension of capacity to learn, compared to the other dimensions of capacity to change, managerial wisdom and strategic direction. This therefore implies that organizational leaders were keener to encouraging and creating an environment of learning and knowledge sharing. Similar studies have shown that resources like training enhance the service climate of the organization [
The findings too showed that Strategic Leadership was evident in the organization. These are in line with Saks [
Factor Analysis Results: How strategic Leadership Perceptions in the Company | Capacity to Learn | Capacity to Change | Managerial Wisdom | Strategic Direction |
---|---|---|---|---|
The organization invests in training it’s human resources | 0.912 | |||
Line Managers ask challenging questions that encourage learning | 0.881 | |||
Line Managers encourage and build strong relationships among members | 0.846 | |||
Top Management Team develop structures through which knowledge can be shared | 0.795 | |||
Employees are encouraged by their Line Managers to work as groups | 0.666 | |||
Top Management Team have the ability to recognize the needs and goals of each units | .882 | |||
The Top Management Team establish control systems that facilitate flexible and innovative employee behaviors | 0.882 | |||
The Line Managers apply appropriate leadership role for interactions with subordinates, peer and superiors | 0.866 | |||
The Top Management Team make sure that employees are comfortable with constant change | 0.860 | |||
Line Managers and employees are committed to treating each other with respect and dignity | 0.524 | |||
The Line Managers show compassion in different situations | 0.840 | |||
The Top Management Team apply honesty and integrity when making decisions | 0.595 | |||
The Line Managers are economically efficient | 0.580 | |||
The Top Management Team have the ability to make timely decisions | 0.538 | |||
Employees are empowered to design strategies to achieve the vision | 0.895 | |||
The action plans are implementable | 0.514 | |||
The Top Management Team determine the vision of the organization | 0.513 | |||
Eigen Value | 8.982 | 4.029 | 1.952 | 1.579 |
Variance % | 35.926 | 16.115 | 7.809 | 6.315 |
Cumulative % | 35.926 | 52.041 | 59.850 | 66.165 |
Mean | 1.891 | 2.517 | 2.748 | 2.939 |
SD | 0.408 | 0.676 | 0.992 | 0.724 |
The Pearson (r) correlation coefficient was employed to test the direction and the degree of association between the study variables (
The relationship between strategic leadership and employee engagement
Strategic leadership and employee engagement were significantly and positively correlated (r = 0.63, p < 0.01). It was further noted that the components of Strategic Leadership namely Strategic Direction, Capacity to Learn, Capacity to change and Managerial wisdom were all positively related to Employee Engagement (p < 0.01). These results show that when supervisors and managers are supportive to the subordinates and cooperate to see to it that they help them to acquire skills and knowledge then such employees are more likely to be enthusiastic, arrive early for work and attach more value to their work. Konrad [
Regression Analysis
The regression analysis was conducted in the
From the table above it shows that strategic leadership is a significant predictor of employee engagement at 38.8% (Adjusted R Square = 0.388, sig < 0.01). These findings are in line with Rothmann [
Mean | SD | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Strategic Direction-1 | 2.939 | 0.724 | 1.000 | ||||
Capacity to Learn-2 | 1.891 | 0.408 | 0.508** | 1.000 | |||
Capacity to change-3 | 2.517 | 0.676 | 0.542** | 0.763** | 1.000 | ||
Managerial wisdom-4 | 2.748 | 0.992 | 0.497** | 0.613** | 0.683** | 1.000 | |
Strategic Leadership-5 | 2.789 | 0.846 | 0.600** | 0.689** | 0.656** | 0.724** | 1.000 |
Employee Engagement | 2.469 | 0.686 | 0.463** | 0.672** | 0.634** | 0.520** | 0.626**1 |
**This shows the level of significance of the correlation at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Unstandardized Coefficients | Standardized Coefficients | t | Sig. | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Model | B | Std. Error | Beta | ||
(Constant) | 0.526 | 0.321 | 1.639 | 0.103 | |
Strategic Leadership | 0.808 | 0.083 | 0.626 | 9.673 | 0.000 |
Dependent Variable: Employee Engagement | |||||
R | 0.626 | ||||
R Square | 0.392 | ||||
Adjusted R Square | 0.388 | ||||
Std. Error of the Estimate | 0.616 | ||||
F Statistic | 93.558 | ||||
Sig. | 0.000 |
The model 1 results in the
The study findings showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the variables of strategic leadership and employee engagement. They indicated that the strategic leadership was a strong predictor of employee engagement with capacity to learn emerging as the most practiced component of strategic leadership at Nile Breweries. This means that the other component of strategic leadership (capacity to change, strategic direction and managerial wisdom) where the least practiced. For an organization to survive and thrive in a competitive and dynamic world it needs to be able to manage change effectively, engage and rally its employees to the overall vision and goal of the organization. It’s thus essential for organizations to involve in training of managers and supervisors on strategic leadership skills so that they can effectively be able to interact with their subordinates in a fair manner and encourage consensus towards the objectives and goals of the organization.
It’s also important that managers practice charisma with dealing with their subordinates [
Change statistics | Model-1 Β | Model-2 β |
---|---|---|
(Constant) | 3.135 | 1.116 |
Gender | 0.552 | 0.223 |
Marital Status | 0.066 | 0.071 |
Age Group | 0.117 | 0.141 |
Tenure | 0.373 | 0.306 |
Highest Level of Education | 0.014 | 0.073 |
Strategic Leadership | 0.628 | |
Dependent Variable: Employee Engagement | ||
R2 | 0.344 | 0.525 |
R2 (Adj.) | 0.316 | 0.501 |
ΔR2 | 0.344 | 0.181 |
F Change | 12.245 | 52.899 |
Sig. | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Simple random sampling was used to select a representative sample out of the population. There is a possibility that same key respondents would have been left out of the sample size. Additionally the study concentrated more on employees at the operational level of management, so it’s possible that some of their views could have been biased regarding their leaders. It was also hard to get empirical evidence of studies carried out specifically relating to the variable under study; strategic leadership and employee engagement, the researcher had to rely on inferences made from studies concerning strategic leadership and employee engagement individually. Therefore more empirical studies are needed to test the relationship between the strategic leadership and employee engagement in different environmental setting. Similarly more studies are needed to test the reliability of the measurement used to measure strategic leadership. The measure used in this study was arrived at after a careful analysis of literature concerning strategic leadership.
Hannah Muzee,Vincent Bagire,Muhammed Ngoma, (2016) Strategic Leadership and Employee Engagement, Evidences from an African Industrial Setting. Open Access Library Journal,03,1-10. doi: 10.4236/oalib.1102907