| dc.description.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. | en_US |
