Task Description

Impact of leadership on employee performance in retail sector

Problem Statement

The problems related to higher turnover rates amongst the various employees working in the retail sector has led the academicians and practitioners, look towards this aspect and work on suitable ways to deal with it. If we consider this phenomenon from the human resource angle, significantly higher rates of turn over basically indicate a kind of negativity from the organizational perspective if the financial consequences are considered.(Shim,2002) The entire process from advertising, recruiting, selecting and training is a very tedious process and requires a lot of financial and manpower planning. So, frequently higher attrition rates are not very good from the organizational perspective.

The replacement of a full-time worker in a private sector of retail may be found to incur a cost of at least 25% more on the overall compensation of the employee. (Jing et al, 2014) Apart from this phenomenon, the higher turnover of employees may also overall have a significant impact on the overall productivity of the employees along with organizational performance. This effect becomes profound if the position of the employee is critical and associated with high profile job roles. Higher rates of turnover normally generate discontinuity and irregularity of work amongst managers and employees thus affecting the organizational performance. Those companies who are unable to reduce the turnover rates lose out on a lot of things about competitiveness in the longer phase. (Wong and Laschinger, 2013)

The presence of employees is utmost for any organization belonging to any sector and is thus the asset of an organization. The productivity of the organization can only be enhanced by its employees leading to effective management of organizational resources and capital along with the achievement of long and short term goals. For the advantageous utilization of this organizational asset, style of leadership has an important role to play so that the employees remain motivated and committed towards the organization. (Abe and Mason, 2016) Furthermore, the employee performance and productivity can also be enhanced with a successful and strategic leadership style in the retail sector. This will ensure healthy organizational delivery and mutual growth for employees and organization.

The present study has been designed to highlight the impact of different styles of leadership on the performance of employees in the retail sector. The basic purpose of this kind of a study is to ensure that it opens avenues for managers to consider the successful leadership styles in different situations. The attitude of the managers has a direct role in employee performance and organizational commitment. As there are limited research surveys in this aspect of HRM, the factors of employee performance which are related to styles of leadership shall be considered and explored in the present area of research. (Bass,1988)

Aims and Objectives

General Objective:
The overall aim is to identify the different factors which are related to employee performance and to study their relationship with the styles of leadership.

Specific Objectives:
I. To draw an interrelationship between dependent and independent variables
II. To find out a direct relationship between employee commitment and leadership style.
III. To find a relationship between motivation and commitment with employee performance and changes(if any) with the style of leadership
IV. To identify a particular leadership style which is most successful in retail sector

Assessment task requires the preparation of a full project proposal that should contain the following components:

- A detail statement of the problem that you would like to investigate.

- Research aim, objectives and research questions: What are the potential research objectives and questions that can address the problem?

- Justification and potential output of the research project: Why is your chosen project important both theoretically and practically? What are the potential outputs and outcomes of your research?

- Conceptual framework: An analysis of the literature relevant to the research topic that will give you the conceptual basis for conducting this research.

- Methodology: Based on the conceptual framework, research aim(s) and objectives, you need to provide a detail description of the data collection methods and tools, data sources and the methods/tools that you will use to analyse the data.

- Organisation of the study, project budget and schedule: Write the names of the chapters/sections of your research report, and briefly discuss what you will write in those chapters/sections followed by a brief description of budget for conducting this study and project schedule i.e., Gantt Chart.

This is an individual research task. You are required to demonstrate your understanding of the relevant body of works to a real-life business research. We expect you to read and reflect on at least twenty recent refereed journal articles on your topic supported by any other evidence or information that can help refine the problem of your research, formulate conceptual framework and the methods of data collection and analysis. Please see detailed guidelines about specific research requirements on the unit Moodle site. You can write 3000 words maximum for this assignment. The cover page and the list of references are not counted in the word limit.