The Role of Organizational Culture on Leadership Styles

Abstract

Objectives: One of the most influential concepts in organizational behavior literature is also organizational culture. The concept of organizational culture has gained wide importance from past to today for business. Organizational culture helps business to understand human at organizational level. Divided into four dimensions, which are clan, adhocracy, market, hierarchy, organizational culture have shown to be associated with several organizational outcomes, including leadership style. Leadership can be defined as the ability of an individual or organization to "lead" or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. There are several leadership styles in present literature. Paternalistic, transformational, transactional, ethical, servant and laissez-faire leadership styles are some of the leadership styles in the relevant literature and they have been used for this study. Within this framework, this study aims to specify the interrelationship between dimensions of organizational culture and different leadership styles. Method: In relation with the main objective of this study, data has been obtained from 173 employees who work in a private construction sector in Turkey. Data were analyzed through SPSS, statistical packaged software. Results: Results showed that clan culture differs significantly according to the servant leadership and paternalistic leadership. Adhocracy culture only differs significantly according to transformational leadership. Market culture differs significantly according to transformational and servant leadership. Hierarchy culture differs significantly according to transactional and paternalistic leadership. Finally, dimensions of organizational culture show neither a large mean difference nor a large effect size on laissez- faire leadership style. Originality: Organizational culture and leadership style have a crucial role in order to achieve specified outcomes for business. The harmony between culture and leader within organization undoubtedly will affect relationships and business processes. In this point, the study has provided further detail on the possible relationships between two variables.