Perceived Effect of Functional Leadership and Employee Characteristics on Performance of Employees at Lake Basin Development Authority, Kenya

Abstract

Functional leadership is the behaviour exhibited by a team leader in mobilizing employees to perform a given task. Group members in an organization are expected to possess certain inherent traits to execute their duties effectively. For long, it was globally perceived that the effect of functional leadership successfully implements the mandate of an organization. Several organizations; Lake Basin Development Authority (LBDA) included require functional leadership to succeed. However, LBDA, Kenyan parastatal, has been facing multiple management challenges in implementing government initiatives; thus she became integrated since 2005 through Performance Contracting. LBDA (2013b) report revealed that employee performance is below the expected standards, the reason remains unknown. Further, it is unknown whether employee characteristics such as sex, age, job satisfaction, education, compensation and tenure affect employee performance. Scholars established that effective interaction between leaders and followers motivates employee performance. This study assessed the perceived effect of functional leadership and employee characteristics on performance. Specific objectives were; establishing the relationship between functional leadership and employee performance; and examining the relationship between employee characteristics and performance. The study was guided by a theoretical framework which conceptualized how variables were linked. Functional leadership assessed how leaders ranked the needs of the task, teams and individuals while employee performance focused on work targets. The research design was descriptive with a population of 310 employees. Stratified sampling was used to select 174 respondents and 91% was the response rate. Validation of the instruments was through test re-test on 8 employees. Data was collected by questionnaire and presented in percentages, graphs, tables and pie charts. The results revealed that functional leadership does not significantly affect employee performance. The regression analysis indicated a p-value of 0.023 meaning that there was sufficient evidence not to reject results. Education and job satisfaction were the employee characteristics which had a significant effect on performance; meaning that a well-educated workforce is efficient while employees who derive job satisfaction from their jobs remain committed. Conclusions showed that functional leadership does not significantly affect employee performance while education and job satisfaction are vital employee characteristics in employment. The recommendations were that public sector institutions should justify their continued existence and employers should emphasize more on employee characteristics when hiring. The results have added new knowledge that education and job satisfaction are important factors that influence employee performance. Further research on effect of functional leadership and employee performance can be done in other parastatals.