Leadership and organizational citizenship behavior in islamic banks: the case of the UAE

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Date
2010-05
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Publisher
British University in Dubai
Abstract
This research aims at investigating, for the first time in the Arab World, the influence of leadership behaviors on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) in the Islamic banking sector. Also, it explores the role of OCB in affecting work outcomes. The study consists of two core concepts: leadership behaviors and OCB. The sample population for the study was drawn from 150 employees working for several Islamic banks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A self-administered questionnaire was developed by combining two instruments. The first one was Bass and Avolio (1995) MLQ x5 scales, and the second one was Konovsky and Organ's (1996) OCB questionnaire. Participants, who were Islamic banks employees, were invited by e-mail to complete a web-based survey. The data was collected through a self-response questionnaire. Factors of the general variables in this study were indentified in order to test the relationship between them. In the current study, three major leadership styles with their factors were examined; transformational, transactional and passive/avoidant leadership. Transformational leadership consists of five factors: inspirational motivation, idealized behaviors, idealized attributes, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Transactional leadership consists of two factors; contingent rewards and management by exception (active). Finally, passive /avoidant behavior consists of two factors; management by exception (passive) and Laissez-faire. Moreover, OCB factors examined in this study were altruism, generalized compliance, conscientiousness, sportsmanship, courtesy and civic virtue. Correlation and regression analysis were conducted in order to test the relationship between leadership behaviors and OCBs. The findings revealed that transformational and transactional leadership styles tend to play a significant role in employees' OCB. Nonetheless, passive/avoidant leadership style plays no role of statical evidence in the relationship. The findings of this study also revealed that transactional leadership behaviors have a stronger positive influence on OCB than transformational leadership behaviors. Though, the difference of the relationship between the two styles is very small. Moreover, the relationship between intellectual stimulation, which is one of the transformational leadership factors, and each of OCB factors were tested. This test was recommended by some researchers (e.g. Mackenzie et al., 2001) as they found a negative influence of this factor on OCB. In the present study, it was found that intellectual stimulation has a significant positive relationship with some of the OCB factors such as altruism, courtesy and generalized compliance. On the other hand, it showed non-significant relationships with civic virtue and sportsmanship. The findings are discussed in details in the research along with some recommendations for supervisors and researchers.
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DISSERTATION WITH DISTINCTION
Keywords
Transactional Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Passive/Avoidant Leadership, Organizational Citizenship Behaviors, Intellectual Stimulation
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