An Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Employee Motivation And Leadership Style Conducted Across Industrial Companies In North-Western Region Of Romania

In an era of global competition and growing diversity of the workforce, the ability to shape the organizational culture, communicate goals and motivate employees is critical to business success. Starting from this assertion, this study presents some of the outcomes of a research study designed to develop a model for analyzing and evaluating the degree of involvement and satisfaction of employees in non-executive positions within the quality management systems of organizations operating in the steel construction industry from the north-western region of Romania. The specific objectives of this study cover the analysis of the “employee motivation” and the “leadership style” variables; the analysis of the relationship between and the influence of the “leadership style” variable on the “employee motivation” variable. The research method applied in the survey was the quantitative research method, i.e. the questionnaire-based survey. The surveyed sample was composed of organizations operating in the steel construction industry, located in northwestern Romania. The research was based on a guided sample of 23 companies active in the industry mentioned and on interviewing a total of 388 non-executive employees from the companies surveyed. For the purpose of the survey, a total of 500 questionnaires were distributed, of which 388 were collected and validated, which accounts for a response rate of 77.6%. This study comprises two main parts: in the first part, we describe in brief the definitions of the concept of leadership, as we have identified them in the specialized literature reviewed. In the second part, we describe our research methodology, the main results obtained and the conclusions drawn. As a primary conclusion, we have found that the two variables studied show relatively high average values, which indicates that there are some problems in the motivational practices applied by the organizations surveyed. We are also confirming the hypotheses tested in the analysis presented in this study.