Managing 21st Century Workforce

Organizations in the 21st century require managers who possess the ability to create employee satisfaction through the right leadership style. Boleslaw (2009) observed that some senior managers believe leadership is about power-holding to manipulate and control the employees. Such leadership style may cause employees' dissatisfaction with their jobs and affect the performance of organizations operating in the competitive business environment. A quantitative correlational research study was conducted to investigate the relationship between leadership style of the senior managers and job satisfaction and commitment of the middle managers working at the corporate headquarters of a communications company in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. In the research study, 166 middle managers of the organization were involved. The middle managers implement organizational strategies, oversee departments within the organization, and report to their respective senior managers. The senior managers included the chief executive officers and the division heads who create strategies for the middle managers to implement. The independent variable examined in the quantitative correlational research study was the leadership style of the senior managers measured with the attributes of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles. The dependent variable was the job satisfaction of the middle managers and their commitment to the organization. The research instruments used to collect data for the current research study were the MLQ Rater Form 5X-Short to investigate leadership style, Job in General Survey (JIG) instrument to evaluate job satisfaction and Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) to measure employee commitment to their organization. A demographic questionnaire was developed for the research study to describe the participants and analyze sub-groups of the participants. The statistical analysis SPSS Version 20.0 was used to collate data and calculate descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum for each leadership style and overall job satisfaction. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient, the analysis of variance (ANOVA), and multiple regression analysis were used for the data analysis. Analysis of the data found that transformational leadership style has a positive correlation on employee job satisfaction and employee commitment. A higher level of job satisfaction and employee commitment for employees who had managers who exhibited transformational leadership was observed. Analysis of the demographic variables found that demographic variables moderated the relationship between leadership style of the senior managers and job satisfaction of the middle managers. The study found that employees, most especially, middle managers of communications industry preferred their senior managers to exhibit more of transformational leadership features, less of transactional leadership, and little or no of laissez-faire leadership styles. Accordingly, leaders in organizations can use the findings from the quantitative correlational research study to enhance positive changes such as increased job satisfaction, organizational commitment, unity of purpose, and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) in their organizations.