CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Centuries ago the belief held was that leaders are born not made. It was widely believed that leadership was uniquely endowed with work ability and also treats of people, which made it possible for them to become leaders.

Autocratic leadership style characteristically is one in which leaders apply coercive reward and even legitimate force on their subordinates. The leader also uses threats and punishments to achieve their desires and does not allow the subordinate to contribute in the running of the organization, which made upward communication of the organization ineffective.

The other types of leadership style are

A.          Laissez-Faire leadership style: leaders here don’t pay attention to the achievement of the organizational goals less emphasis is laid to the behaviour of the subordinates therefore they are left to o what they chose. These leaders are only there as figure heads.

B.          Likere leadership style: Reisis Lifetree is a graduated from the university of Michigan and his associate has for decades based themselves on leadership style in enterprises. In this studies they came out to say that an effective manager as strong oriented to his subordinates relying on communication to keep all parties working as a unit, others include

a.          Benevolent

b.          Consultative

c.     Participate group

1.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In the course of this study, the researcher tried to survey some theories that will further enhance the understanding of the concept of Autocratic leadership and its effect on employee productivity.

     Among the theories that are worthy of mention and explanation are

A.     The trait theory of leadership

B.     The behaviour leadership theories

C.      The situational leadership theories

The trait theory posits that the leader has always occupied a central role in management theory most of the early researchers on leadership attempted to either compare the traits of people who became leaders with those who did not identify characteristics and traits possessed by effective leaders.

     According to Weiss and Adler (1984:1) the trait approach to leadership is the evaluation and selection of leaders on the basis of their physical mental and social and physiological characteristics

     The behavioral school on the other hand is a product of the dissatisfaction with the trait theory. This theory focuses on how leaders should behave rather than on traits or characteristics they might possess

     According to a number of studies carried out in the United States like the Ohio state leadership studies. They made a series of in-depth studies of the behavior of leaders in a wide variety of organizations. The key concern of the Ohio state University study was the leaders behavior in directing the support of others towards group objectives.

     The situational or contingency leadership theory stated out with the assumption that appropriate behaviour or style depends on the circumstance at a given time, there are five importances of these theories. They are

a.       Houses path goal theory

b.      Tannebaum and schmidts leadership continuum

c.       Fielders contingency leadership theory

d.      Vrooms and yattons normative leadership theory

e.       Heresy and blachards situation leadership theory

All the theories examined in the theoretical framework in the study of this research work will help the researcher and the student to understand and better appreciate the topic of the researchers effort.

1.3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

All effort made by the leader of the organization in making the productivity of workers improve seems not to be yielding a positive result. In using other types of leadership style, many organization have concluded that autocratic leadership style would make the employee more productive than using the democratic style of leadership because

A.          Workers are not putting their best in production since they are not motivated rather punished, there by contributing to the death of the organization

B.          Leaders who are authoritarian do not actually achieve their company’s objective and the rate of staff turnover is on the increase and the process-experienced workers are lost.

C.          Also, in many organizations, some leaders tend to be autocratic relying heavily in the power of their formal position. Highly authoritarian lowers place high Permian on completing assigned task, while neglecting the needs of their subordinates

D.          Autocratic leader run centralized system of organization, they take no note thereby duplicating no authority to the subordinate and places higher interest on the achievement of organizational goods then the welfare of staffs and workers in the organization

1.4  OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The main objective of this study is to enable leaders know the best leadership style that may improve their employee productivity. The study would also serve as a reference material to many administrative officers and business students in and out of the school needs

1.5  RESEARCH QUESTIONS

A.      Does autocratic leadership style influence employee productivity

B.      Does autocratic leadership style achieve its objective

C.       Is there any significant leadership between autocratic leadership style and industrial harmony

D.     How does autocratic leadership style influence employee moral

1.6  RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

Based on the research problem stated above, the following hypotheses were generated for the research.

A.          Ho: autocratic leadership cannot influence employee   productivity in an organization

B.          Hi:  autocratic leadership can influence employee        productivity in an organization

C.          Ho: autocratic leadership cannot cause the worker to put   in his best and the productivity is very low.

D.          Hi: autocratic leadership makes the worker to be more       productive and he puts in 100% commitment in the     work he is doing

1.7     SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The effect of autocratic leadership style on the employee productivity cannot be overemphasized because the study will help in controlling and directing future mangers organizations will use the book in their style of leading the workers in the organization and also the study will change the perception of organizations leadership style i.e. can also review the factors that are strengths and weakness cannoning job motivation on an organization.

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