M033LON RESEARCH PROPOSAL

The impact of leadership style on organisation performance: under the context of Chinese cultural context

Lecturer name: Student name: Student Number: Date of submission: 20th June 2009 Word count: 1, 617

Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 2 Account of the Method .......................................................................... 3
Research Design .................................................................................................3 Data Collection................................................................................................... 5 Primary data collection ...............................................................................5 Secondary data collection method ...............................................................6 Data Analysis .....................................................................................................6 Ethical Considerations ........................................................................................6 Project Management of the Process ....................................................................6

Discussion and conclusions .................................................................... 7 Reference ................................................................................................ 8 Appendix 1 ................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. Appendix2 ................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined. Appendix 3 ................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.

Abstract
Among the studies of leadership, scholars focused on the research on the relationship between leadership styles and orgnisation performance under specific context. However, all those work was based on Western culture. Hence, this paper tried to examine relationship between leadership style and performance within Chinese service industry. This paper is an academic proposal, which clearly reviewed the literatures, designed method, and discussed theoretical implication and drawback. The main part of the paper is the methodology design. Positivism philosophy and deductive approach will be adopted by using survey research strategy. The survey will begin from 1st to 20th Jul, 2011. 500 questionnaires will be sent out (250 for employees and 250 for customers), and the respondents who are the employees and customers in five service companies in China will be selected as samples to measure the leadership style and organisation performance. This research use independent ANOVA in SPSS 17.0 to test the difference on the organisation performance between the three leadership styles. Furthermore, the ethical considerations and project management of the process are discussed as well.

Key words: leadership, style, performance, relationship, culture, methodology, data, Chinese.

Introduction
Since Leadership has direct influence on business organization performance, it has become one of the most popular academic topics. According to Mcshane and Gilnow (2005, pp. 2), leadership was defined as the ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to the effectiveness and success of the organization which they are numbers. Among many subsequent studies on leadership, the theme of leadership style was the most frequently referred topic after the early research on the personal trait (Mahoney et al., 1960), and many scholars tried to find one best leadership style for improving business performance. There are several ways to classify leadership styles. According to Ogbonna and Harris (2000), there are three basic leadership styles: participative, supportive, and instrumental. Besides, Armstrong and Stephens (2005) summarized four contrasting leadership pairs: charismatic/non-charismatic, autocratic/democratic, enabler/controller, and transactional/transformational.

Although some respected researchers such as Fiedler (1996) pointed out the direct link between leadership style and the success or failure of an organization, there were still few empirical evidences to support arguments. Based on situational and contingency theories (Mullins, 1999), it is impossible to find one best style because of situational factors. Hence, many scholars switched their concentration from best leadership style to context sensitive leadership. Ogbonna and Harris (2000) used three leadership styles to testify the relationship between leadership and performance under different orgnisational culture. They found that instrumental leadership is negatively linked with performance while supportive and participative leadership styles are positively related (Ogbonna and Harris, 2000, pp. 782). But the relationship between style and performance is suspended by the types of organizational culture. However, these literatures are based upon limiting assumptions and practices, which merely reflect Western culture. Hofstede (1980) argued people from different nations would be varied based on different cultural dimensions (See Appendix 1). Hence,
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from the perspective of situational theories, the research finding based on Western Culture cannot directly examine such relationship within different cultural context, such as in China. As few empirical researches in China, it is worthwhile to research this topic under Chinese cultural context. Therefore, the aim of paper is to examine the relationship between leadership style and organisation performance in China, choosing service industry as a sample. Several objectives are identified as the basic guidance of research paper: (1) Reviewing the Western theories to understand the leadership style and its relationships with performance under different situational context. (2) Reviewing the leadership literatures based on Chinese culture and examining the attributes that influence Chinese leadership behaviours and its effect. (3) Testifying and analysing the relationship between Chinese leadership style and performance. (4) Comparing with Western researches, testifying whether the finding result is similar, and evaluating the emerging issues in the research finding.

Account of the Method

Research Design There are two types of research philosophies, which are positivist philosophy and phenomenological philosophy (Saunders et al, 2009). The former one uses small size sample to investigate in depth and detail, and the latter one uses larger size sample to suggest hypotheses tested by quantitative methods. Considering the nature of this research, the relationship between leadership styles and organisation performance will be explored. It needs to use large sample size to identify the link between the factors of leadership styles and organisation performance. Thus, positivism philosophy will be adopted here. According to Saunders et al (2009), positivist philosophy usually connects deductive approach. Deductive approach refers to the research, where a theoretical structure is developed and then tested by empirical facts, deducts the
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specific instances from general influences (Hussey and Hussey, 1997). Using deductive approach, hypothesis will be obtained through literature review, while quantitative data will be collected and analysed to test the hypothesis, whereas inductive approach is related to phenomenological philosophy. Hence, deductive approach is more proper approach in this research. After selecting the research philosophy and approach, the next step is to determine the research strategy, which ensures that research facts and data can explain the initial research problem (Creswell, 2009). The research strategy includes experiment, survey, archival analysis, history, and case study (Yin, 2009, p.6). The corresponding characteristics of these research strategies can be checked through three dimensions (Appendix 2). From the Appendix 2, the experiment strategy needs control over behavioural events. The archival analysis and history methods do not reflect contemporary events. Meanwhile, the case study strategy lacks rigour and objectivity (Rowley, 2002). Considering the research purpose, these above four research strategies could not satisfy the research aim properly. In addition, survey strategy can answer the questions of Who, what, where, and how many. Thus, in order to investigate the relationship between these two factors, survey strategy is suitable and will be adopted in this research. A survey is generally conducted by questionnaire with three parts, i.e. demographic information, the measure scale of perceived leadership styles, and the measure scale of organisation performance. (1) Demographic information of respondents will be collected, such as gender, education level, etc. (2) The measure of perceived leadership styles of House (1971), which contains 13 items (see Appendix 3), has been widely accepted as a reliable and valid measure of perceptions of leadership style. The perceived leadership style variable is divided into
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three dimensions, i.e. participative style (contains 5 items), supportive style (contains 4 items), and instrumental style (contain 4 items). 7- point scale is respectively represented by (1) Strongly Agree and (7) Strongly Disagree and (1) Very True and (7) Very False. (3) Organisation performance is viewed as a multi-dimensional and highly complex variable (Ogbonna and Harris, 2000), and in this research it will be measured considering both the short-term and long term performance according to 5 variables related to organisation performance, including customer satisfaction, sales growth, market share, competitive advantage, and sales volume. The corresponding scale was developed by Ogbonna and Harris (2000), and will be used in this research. Data Collection Primary data collection The primary data will be collected from 1st to 20th Jul, 2011. 250 questionnaires will be sent out. Meanwhile, the employees in five service companies in China will be selected as samples to measure the leadership style and organisation performance (except the customer satisfaction variable). The employees must be worked in his/her companies for at least 3 years, which ensure that he/she are familiar with the leader style and the companys performance variables, such as sales growth, market share, and sales volume. Service companies are from the fields of restaurant, hospital, super market, fitness centre, and bank, because the employees in such service companies are more available due to limited scheduled research time. When measuring the customer satisfaction variable, additional 250 questionnaires will be sent out stochastic focusing on the same companies.

Secondary data collection method The online database in library, such as Science Direct, Emerald, JSTOR, and Wiley online library will be used to find the related theories on Chinese culture, leadership style, and organisation performance. Data Analysis This research use independent ANOVA in SPSS 17.0 to test the difference on the organisation performance between the three leadership styles. If there is significant difference between the three styles, then these styles will be compared the means and see which one is higher, the higher one is better than the other. Then, the conclusions will be drawn that which style of leadership will significantly influence the organization performance. And by comparing with the findings in western theories, whether there are differences of the influences between western and eastern culture can be discussed as well. Ethical Considerations The participants can easily be accessed in these service companies and the author must obtain their approvals before doing the survey. There is no potential harm to the respondents. After the data are collected, this information will be kept secret and only be used in this research. Project Management of the Process The timetable of this research can be seen in Appendix 4. The scheduled due time of survey would be slightly because researcher need confirm the time when these respondents are available. The risk that no respondent answer the questionnaires is very low, because the respondents are adequate.

Discussion and conclusions

In this research, the positivism philosophy, deductive approach and the corresponding survey strategy are identified according to the research aim and objectives. Furthermore, the measurements of each variable are discussed as well, which are all accepted scale by previous researchers and can make sure the validity, reliability. Besides, the data collection process and data analysis are identified based on methodology theories. In Chinese leadership studies, scholars mainly focused on the researches on personal traits and leadership style. Although there are a certain number of literatures that study the relationship between leadership style and performance, they either directly used Western theories or seldom conduct empirical researches. Since there are few empirical researches on this topic in Chinese academic area, this paper would make certain contribution for both academic and practical fields. However, because this paper is a students paper, there must a number of drawbacks. First, since lacking of relationship with target Chinese companies, the research respondents of this paper are only employees and customer of these companies. The leadership styles in research are perceived style, which might influence the accuracy of the research. Second, this research only conducts within single industry. Meanwhile, the limited time, research scope, and limited Chinese literatures all negatively influence the value of this research paper. This paper is a research proposal, which aims to find the relationship between leadership style and organization performance within Chinese cultural context. Firstly, the paper reviewed the related literatures and developed research aims and objectives. Then the paper would use quantitative research method to conduct whole research and a complete research method step was designed. Finally, the paper discussed the relationship between methodology and theories, paper contribution, and research drawback.
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Reference
Armstrong, M. and Stephens, T. (2005), Management and Leadership A Guide to Managing for Results, Glasgow: Bell & Bain. Creswell, J.W. (2009), Search design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage Publications, Inc. Fiedler, F. (1996), Research on Leadership Selection and Training: one view of the future, Amdinistrative Science Quarterly, vol. 41, no.2, pp. 241-150. Available online: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2393716, [Accessed: 17 June, 2011]. Hofstede, G. (1980), Cultural Constraints in Management Theories, The Academy of Management Executive, vol. 7, pp. 81-94. House, R. (1971). A Path-Goal Theory of Leadership, Journal of Contemporary

Business, vol. 3, pp. 8197. Mahoney, T. Jardee, T, and Allan, N. (1960), Predicting Managerial Effectiveness, Personnel Psychology, vol. Summer, pp. 147-163. McShane, S. and M. Von Glinow, (2005), Organizational Behavior, Boston: McGraw-Hill. Mullins, L. (1999), Management and Organisational Behaviour, London: Financial Times. Ogbonna, E. and Harris, L. (2000), Leadership Style, Organizational, Culture and Performance: empirical evidence from UK companies, Internal Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 766-788.

Ogbonna, E., and Harris, L.C. (2000), Leadership style, organizational culture and erformance: empirical evidence from UK companies, Int. Journal of Human

Resource Management, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 766-788. Rowley, J. (2002), Using case studies in research, Management Research News, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 16-27. Saunders, M., Lewis, P., Thornhill, A. (2009), Research Methods for Business Students Fifth Edition. Essex: Pearson Education.

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