Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of an individual or a group towards attaining a specific set

of goals. This influence can either be negative or positive depending on the leadership style adopted. This study

established the relationship between leadership styles and employee productivity in the manufacturing sector in

Malawi, Southern Africa. It used a mixed method approach that included data collected from questionnaires and

interviews along with statistical testing using the Spearman’s rank correlation in SPSS. Results showed that in

the Malawian manufacturing sector, based on employee perceptions, the most prevalent leadership style was the

autocratic leadership style and the least prevalent was the Laissez-Faire leadership style. The democratic

leadership was considered the most effective style for enhancing productivity, however, only the persuasive

Over the years, various scholars have studied the concept of leadership with the aim of understanding and

improving the inherent benefits of effective leadership, as such several definitions of leadership have emerged.

Although the general consensus over time has been that leadership is a difficult concept to define (Winston and

Patterson, 2006), however, more recent definitions describe it as “the ability to influence people to willingly

follow one’s guidance or adhere to one’s decisions” (Rue and Byars, 2017) and “the process of influencing the

activities of an individual or a group towards attainment of a common goal or a set of goals” (Northouse, 2018).

There are numerous leaderships styles that exist in workplaces such as persuasive, laissez-faire, autocratic and

democratic leadership; they are assumed to have a significant impact on the productivity of employees in an

organization. Productivity is directly influenced by labour performance (specifically human labour) which is a

is a correlation (either negative or positive) between leadership styles and employee productivity. Related studies

in this region have not yet examined how leadership styles influence employee and organizational performance

especially in the manufacturing sector. Candlex Limited is a growing, aggressive, and leading manufacturer and

marketer of quality home and personal care products (i.e., laundry powder, bathing soaps and cosmetics) that are

distributed through independent shops, retail and wholesale chains scattered across Malawi. This manufacturing

company has been functioning in Malawi for over 30 years and has significantly contributed to Malawi’s

economic development and employment creation. Recently Candlex Limited has highlighted that low employee

productivity has become a major problem that is due to the application of leadership styles that are not suitable

for certain situations/challenges within the organization This has also impacted production targets (creating large

financial gaps), employee retention and motivation (Chikhambi and Mafeni, personal communication).

An effective leadership style improves employee retention, motivation, and productivity and thus, our study will

contribute to theory and practice of leadership in organizations and public policies. It will also recommend a

leadership framework for improving employee productivity in the manufacturing sector in Malawi which will

be used by students, researchers, academic scholars, managers/ leaders, employees and Malawi government

authorities. The Malawi Government has recently expressed “the desire and resolve to be an inclusively wealthy

and self-reliant industrialized upper-middle-income country by the year 2063” (Government of Malawi, 2020,

p.11) and has recognised manufacturing along with visionary and transformative leadership as key components

towards the attainment of Malawi’s Vision 2063 (Government of Malawi, 2020). Therefore, this study will make

a significant contribution towards the advancement of knowledge to help the country’s goal and vision.

The main aim of this study was to establish the relationship between leadership style and employees’ productivity

3. What is the relationship between leadership style and employee productivity?

This study used the research onion framework which explains pictorially the various aspects of the research to

be examined through providing steps to formulate a research design and methodology (Saunders et al., 2019).

This study also used ontological assumptions, or “nature of reality” faced in research because assumptions are

inevitable as a researcher (Burrell and Morgan, 2019). Additionally, the pragmatism philosophy was used to

incorporate both qualitative and quantitative elements of the study. In this instance, the researcher is an objective

analyst of the external world; the end-product of research are law-like generalization (Saunders et al., 2019).

There are 3 types of research approaches namely, deduction, induction, and abduction approach (Creswell and

interviews (Schwedt, 2007). This study also used the cross-sectional time horizon which is a short-term study

involving collection of data at a specific point of time. Data was collected in September 2022 (1 month) and the

time horizon for the study was from August to October 2022.

The study was conducted at the Candlex Regional Office in Makata Industrial area Blantyre, Malawi. This

organization was selected because it was in convenient and easily accessible for data collection (close to the

respondents) within a specified time frame. Candlex has also been reported as a growing, aggressive, and leading

manufacturer and marketer of home and personal care solutions that has a long history (over 30 years) of

delivering good quality products. Candlex contributes significantly to Malawi’s economic development by

adding value and creating employment and was therefore ideal for this study.

A sample size is a subset/sampling unit, or a group chosen from a larger population with the aim of yielding

information about the population. According to literature, a good sample size needs to be representative and of

adequate or sufficient size to allow for confidence in the stability of its characteristics. For this study, the sample

size was determined using the Yamane (1967) formula which is as follows:

Where N is the population of the study and 𝑒 is the level of significance or margin of error. The researcher

considered 10% as the margin of error and 90% confidence level. Candlex Limited has 82 employees that are

instruments that consists of a group of questions designated to elicit information from an informant to a

respondent (Schwedt, 2007). Questionnaires were distributed to the staff of Candlex Limited to gather

etc.) were reviewed to obtain further required information and data as part of the “quantitative analysis” aspect

scale answers and ratings ranging from a minimum of 1.0 (strongly disagree) to a maximum of 5.0 (strongly

agree). The employee productivity scale (adopted from Yousef, 2000) was used and employees rated their own

productivity from a scale of 1 (very low) to 5 (very high).

After collection, the data was analyzed descriptively using tables, figures, graphs, diagrams and percentages. A

Spearman’s rank correlation was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) which is used to

measure the strength of the relationship between two variables and to compute their association. Basically, a

correlation analysis calculates the level of change in one variable due to the change in the other (Duckett and

Macfarlane, 2003). A Spearman’s rank correlation (denoted as rs) is used to evaluate relationships involving

ordinal variable correlations, specifically when two variables have been ranked and “causation” needs to be

established (i.e. the increase in one variable resulting in an increase/decrease in the other variable). In this study,

a Spearman’s rank correlation was used to assess the association between leadership styles and employee

variance (R

) of the regression minus 1 and this measures how much the variance of a regression coefficient is

inflated due to multicollinearity. A VIF value of 1 means there’s no multicollinearity while a >10 indicates very

high multicollinearity (Allison, 1999; Hair et al., 2010).

the employees using a productivity scale (1-5). Democratic leadership was rated as the most effective on their

own productivity (3.63) while autocratic leadership was rated as the least effective (2.44) (Figure 2).

Table 4: Spearman’s Rank Correlation Analysis results (** p<0.01 (2-tailed; *p<0.05; n=45).

The first objective of this study was to identify the types of leadership styles that are most prevalent in the

manufacturing sector in Malawi using Candlex Limited as a case study example. The autocratic leadership style

was ranked as the most prevalent and laissez-faire as the least prevalent. Based on these results, we assumed that

most manufacturing companies in Malawi prefer autocratic leadership; where the leader/ manager controls all

the decisions with minimal input from employees.

Furthermore, the democratic leadership style is usually the most prevalent in organizations as it is more

“employee-centered” (Setiawan et al., 2021). The prevalence of the autocratic leadership style in the

manufacturing sector in Malawi may imply that most employees are possibly excluded from decision-making

and cannot openly express their opinions and emotions. This has negative consequences not only on productivity,

but also on other workplace dynamics such as conflict resolution, employee involvement, self-confidence and

overall quality of work. Employees that are not trusted with important decisions and tasks may question the

value they bring to this sector (Harms et al., 2018).

The second objective was to determine the leadership style that employees perceived to influence their own

productivity the most. The third objective was to assess the relationship between leadership styles and

Democratic leadership was ranked as the style that employees perceived to have the most influence on their

productivity (based on the productivity ratings). It also had a positive moderate correlation with productivity

based on the Spearman’s Rank. This implied that it is a suitable leadership style for employees in the industry

even though our earlier findings showed that it is amongst the least prevalent styles. Democratic leadership has

been linked to better cohesion amongst employees; where everyone is free to express themselves and is

sometimes linked to quick and easy resolution of complex issues (Shanmugam et al., 2020). Other studies which