RATIONAL VS. POLITICAL LEADERSHIP: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR OF MANAGERS’ AND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS IN THE STATE OWNED BANKS OF SRI LANKA

Abstract

Leadership has been identified as a one of the prerequisite for organizational effectiveness in management literature. Most of theories of leadership highlight the rational behaviour for being effective leader. But there is emerging evidence that political behaviour is an indispensable element of leadership given the today’s highly complex organizational context. The present study examined the degree to which the political behaviour of leadership has caused to leadership effectiveness of managers of state owned banks in Sri Lanka. Two hypotheses were formulated based on the conceptual model developed by the researcher as to assess the effect of political behaviour on leadership and to identify the nature political behaviour of managers. A sample of 40 managers and 200 subordinates was drawn using stratified random sampling and two standard questionnaires were administered to collect data. Mann-Whitney U- test was applied to test the effect of political behaviour on leadership effectives and factor analysis was used to identify the factors for political behaviour if any. It was found that political behaviour of managers has a significant effect on their perceived leadership effectiveness. Further it was evident that subordinates perceived the political leadership behaviour effective only when they see it leads to higher performance. Some leaders of the state owned banks tend to be more political in behaviour than others. Those who exhibit political leadership behaviour are perceived by their subordinates as effective since it has resulted in higher performance in them.

Key Words: Leadership, Leadership Behaviour, Leadership Effectiveness and Political Behaviour

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk