Transformational Leadership, Work Engagement and Performance Among Public Service Employees in Uganda

Abstract

This study aims at examining the relationship between transformational leadership, work engagement and performance among employees of the public service in Uganda. The study also reports an investigation into the mediating effect of work engagement on the relationship between transformational leadership and performance. To test the relationships between transformational leadership, work engagement and performance, the author applied the Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient. The mediating effect was tested using the three step regression analysis proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986). Data was collected from 132 employees of Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development in Uganda. The results show a positive and significant relationship between transformational leadership, work engagement and employee performance. Though, the inspirational motivation component of transformational leadership is not related to overall work engagement. And the transformational leadership component of individualised consideration is not related to overall performance. Work engagement is found to fully mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ performance. So even when the results of this study to a certain extent are explained by the social exchange theory, emphasis should be on creating an environment of work engagement by management because this has shown to increase employee performance. However, a possible limitation could be arising from the use of self-report questionnaires. That is, responses generated from the “employees only” could have been biased because they might have expected chastisement for negative responses.

Keywords Transformational leadership, Work engagement, Performance

DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-23-03

Publication date:August 31^st 2020