The effects of employees' perceptions of leader's leadership style on the job satisfaction of employees at small and medium enterprises in Taiwan (China).

摘要

The current study is designed to describe and examine the effects of employees' perceptions of leader's leadership style on the job satisfaction of employees at small and medium enterprises in Taiwan. A total of 1636 employees at small and medium enterprises in Taiwan took part in this study. The participants completed the three sets of self-reported questionnaires, including Background Characteristics, Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Form 5X) (MLQ 5X) (Bass and Avolio, 1995) and Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) (Spector, 1985). The collected data were computed and analyzed via descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA, and stepwise multiple regression analysis. The findings of the study were generalized as follows: (1) the dominant leadership styles at small and medium enterprises in Taiwan were transformational leadership style and transactional leadership style; (2) the overall job satisfaction of employees at small and medium enterprises in Taiwan was at a medium degree. The highest degree of job satisfaction by employees in these enterprises was represented by coworker interaction and the lowest degree of job satisfaction was pay; (3) significant relationships existed among perceived leadership styles relative to gender, age, marital status, educational background, and years of professional experience; (4) significant differences existed among employees' overall job satisfaction relative to marital status and educational background; (5) overall perceived leadership style emerged as the significant predictor of the employees' job satisfaction. Transformational leadership style significantly and positively predicted job satisfaction; it emerged as the strongest single predictor among three perceived leadership styles for job satisfaction. Transactional leadership style and laissez-faire leadership style significantly and inversely predicted overall job satisfaction. Based on the findings, some implications for the SME leaders in Taiwan were proposed: (1) the SME leaders should understand that acting as transformational leaders will increase employee job satisfaction and retention, and will be a positive strategy towards the management of enterprises; (2) the employees were not happy with pay, operating conditions, fringe benefits and contingent rewards at SME in Taiwan. Therefore, the SME leaders should pay more attention to these issues; when these situations improve, the degree of job satisfaction for the employees should increase consistently.