Abstract

The study was conducted to investigate the relationship of strategic leadership on employee performance through the mediation of employee engagement in the Higher Education Commission Islamabad head office. The inquiry was conducted in a natural working environment of an organization where respondents are situated/located that is a field study. A simple random sampling technique was used to carry out the research. The questionnaires were based on a five-point Likert scale measuring strategic leadership, employee engagement and employee performance. 167 questionnaires were distributed among middle-level employees of the Higher Education Commission, out of which 127 were useable. The data were analyzed using SPSS software. The descriptive statistics indicated that strategic leadership shows a significant positive impact on employee performance, whereas employee engagement does mediate the relationship between the independent variable, i.e., Strategic leadership, and dependent variable i-e, Employee Performance. Recommendations to improve employee performance under this study are provided to the organization

Key Words

Islamabad, Higher Education Commission, Strategic Leadership, Employee            Engagement, Employee Performance

Introduction

According to Allen (2008), In this advancement era where there are major shifts in technology and production, unfortunately, it is difficult to keep the valued employees on board. The survival of the organizations in every sector of the economy is always dependent on skilled personnel’s (Harrison, 2012). In this competitive world, it is very much important for organizations to bring change and keep pace with development in order to maintain their position in the economy (Dhaifallah, 2013). Success full change initiates from inside the organization if communicated effectively concerning the needs of employees and having strong resources devoted to the change (Arami, 2016). Employees are considered the backbone of corporations. Therefore, it is a need to manage all the functions of the firms in order to maintain sustainability, and it is very much important to a favorable environment for the employees (Bass & Avolio,2017). We have come up to live in an age where leadership is the solution to this problem through which productivity can be increased (Wilson, 2016). According to Bass (2008), leadership is not a supernatural or exquisite state; rather then it is an observable and learnable set of practices that needs to be performed effectively in an organization. In the present time frame, many enterprises are facing issues like immoral practices, staff resignation rate, and poor financial performance. It is because of the lack of effective leadership. According to Vigoda-Gadot (2012), the main goal of any enterprise is to accomplish its set objectives and to gain a cutthroat edge, to be a competitor in the industry; therefore, it is very important for an organization to have effective leadership for creating a vision, articulating the vision to the employees and for coordinating and motivating the employees.

Leadership is a comprehensive concept and practice in which the employees of an organization are entangled in the procedure of being affected or having control over others (Munyeka,2014). Employees of the organization are always inquisitive in asking about different elements that make a usual employee a renowned captain (Bateman &Snell,2002). A leader is a leader because of the follower (Tannenbanum& Schmidt,2012). In order to effectively implement the strategies, it is the foremost responsibility of a leader to identify the attributes and capabilities of his followers(Sofi & Devanadhen,2015). Leadership is the potential to have mastery over others. He is the one who identifies the abilities of his followers and is able to regulate, monitor and coordinate the activities of the followers (Deedenwii, 2017). The issue of leadership in the government and private sector is a common problem in all underdeveloped countries (Marcus & Olowu, 2017). According to Drucker (2015), all successful companies have one major quality that differentiates them from unsuccessful organizations, and that is the efficient leadership of an organization. Furthermore, research shows that the power full and top executives are the most fundamental and deficient resource of any enterprises (Malachy, 2016). Leadership is not only restrained to business, but it covers all other sectors: government, education, transport and every other form of organization (Iqbal et al.,2015). For the last few decades, the importance of group effectiveness has been considered as the main aim of many papers (Choudhary,2013). The process of controlling teams and ensuring that they are working effectively requires a presence of a leader who can formulate a vision for an organization, encourage them to attain the vision of their business (Koech & Namusonge, 2012). According to Ebrahim Hassan (2018), it is believed that leaders are there to set smart goals and empower their subordinates to achieve those goals, this is the reason leader plays a vital role in formulating a vision, empowering the employees, managing conflicts and resolving the challenges arisen in a team environment this is why their role is considered as a critical tool in team management. According to Choi (2007), a leader needs to have a great awareness and the competencies that are there in the competitive world that leads to success and help them to make the relevant, timely and correct decision in the leadership of change and leadership of subordinates. Leadership is an enthusiastic environment and culture in the organization (Al-Phasand& Al-Amaze, 2016). According to (Akor) 2014 effective leadership style can encourage and develop excellencies in the growth of employees of the organization. One only focusses of early studies was to identify the personality traits that characterize victorious leaders (Mahoney et al., 2007). Trait theories assume that leaders are born, not made, and they have certain inborn attributes which differentiate them from others. However, the difficulty in classifying and verifying those traits leads to the criticism of the trait theory approach (Szitagy et al., 2000). A leader is one who influences and motivates behavior, having a can-do personality and strong leadership skills (Theresa, 2019).

Leaders have a managing style in every stage of goal formulation, and that is essential for the effectiveness and success of teamwork (Gilbreath, 2014).Baridam(2007) stated that in many researches it had been observed that the leaders are not fully aware of the potentials of their subordinates and what they are capable of due to which they lack in implementing the strategies by identifying the best fit for the best job and what characteristics an employee has to best utilize the resources and have maximum production. As a result of these issues, which are not identified on time, can cause a major decrease in the motivation of the employees that result in a major effect on the productivity of team members.  According to Knotz (2008), Leaders have different styles, and it is always a challenge for leaders to identify which style could be the best fit for a particular group of employees as leaders sometimes fail to identify the situation and with that to implement the best leadership style to have maximum productivity and to increase the motivation of the employees. It is always difficult for leaders to provide an imperative direction for subordinates that can help them to achieve organizational objectives (Maizura et al.,2011). According to Gyensare et al. (2016), leadership is always a two-way process where the leader is influencing their followers, and also, the leader gets influenced by the followers. It is said that leadership always exists in relation to the followers. According to Hollenbeck (2012). A leader and a manager cannot be the same; therefore, it is important to understand the difference between a leader and a follower; a leader generates a prospect of future for employees, articulate the vision to team members, motivate their employees to achieve the vision, creates short term wins, addresses the problem of those affected by the change and maintain the momentum of change., whereas managers sets objectives, make strategies to achieve those objectives, control and monitor the activities of employees and having a check on employees to see whether the right person is at the right job performing the right task.

According to yukl (2017), leadership is a phenomenon or a stated course of action that is built to have the aim of influencing employees to have an interpretation of how to perform tasks and to have a shared vision of how to achieve the goals of their organizations. Leadership is a process where individual call their leaders have the ability and potential to influence their employees to achieve a common end (Northhouse,2018). Lope et al.,2019 stated that there are many approaches that have evolved over the years to describe leadership, their characteristics, their traits and their abilities to have a great impact on their employees. Leadership is considered a widely discussed topic in the literatures. It is said that leadership is a course of action a person uses to have a mastery of others, lead others, sets directions for others, guide their employees towards achieving the goals in a set circumstance (Fleishman et al. 2015). This is the capability of a leader to indulge the employees in the goal achievement process with confidence so that the employees can feel motivated in achieving their goals Adair (, 2016). According to Koudri (2014), leadership is to have an ability to deal with the employees and to meet up with the changes happening in the external environment, to have long term planning and to see a wider picture and not only having a concern to protect himself but to take risks and having a concentration on having a concern for people and their values.

Literature Review

Theoretical Framework



Methodology

Population

The population of the study consists of middle-level managers working at the various department of the Higher Educational Commission headquarter, Islamabad.




Sampling 

A subset of the population, which represents the overall population, is considered a sample size. The sample size for

this study is selected according to the table of Krejcie and Morgan (1970) to get more accuracy. As the population of this study is 187, as per the table of Krejcie and Morgan (1970), it falls under the slab of 127 sample size.




Measures

The questionnaire was distributed to collect data from HEC middle-level managers. A brief introduction is given about the study at the start of the questionnaires. Strategic Leadership is measured by using a scale (Deloitte, 2015) which consist of 07 items. To measure the employee engagement scale of (Allen and Smith, 1993) is used, which consist of 06 items, and the employee performance is measured using a scale developed by (Baritur, 2017) which consist of 8 items. Questionnaires consist of a total of 21 items 

Research Results

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics

	Mean	Skewness	Kurtosis
TSL	4.27	-.681	1.204
TEE	4.25	-.754	.810
TEP	4.27	-.938	1.198

Table 2. Reliability and Validity Analysis

Variables	Cronbach’s Alpha
Strategic   Leadership	0.806
Employee Engagement	0.764
Employee Performance	0.714

 

Table 3. Descriptive Statistics

	Range	Min	Max	Mean	Std. Deviation	Variance
TAL	2.67	3.67	5.00	4.27	.635	.134
TEE	2.11	3.11	4.00	4.25	.346	.119
TEP	2.43	3.25	4.22	4.27	.358	.128

 

Table 4. Correlation

		TAL	TEE	TEP
TAL	Pearson Correlation	1	.429**	.416**
			.000	.000
		127	127	127
TEE	Pearson Correlation	.429**	1	.474**
		.000		.000
		127	127	127
TEP	Pearson Correlation	.416**	.474**	1
		.000	.000
		127	127	127

 

Table 5. Regression

Model	R	R Square	Adjusted R Square
1	.416a	.173	.167

 

Table 6

Model		Mean Square	F	Sig.
1	Regression	2.799	26.188	.000b
		.200
	Total

 

Table 7

		Standardized Coefficients	T	Sig.
		Beta
			7.429	.000
	TSL	.416	5.117	.000

 

Table 8

R	R Square
.329a	.108

 

Table 9

Model		Mean Square	F	Sig.
1	Regression	1.630	15.184	.000b
	Residual	.107
	Total

 

Table 10

		Standardized Coefficients	T	Sig.
		Beta
			8.560	.000
	TSL	.429	3.897	.000

 

Table 11

R	R Square	Adjusted R Square
.374a	.140	.133

 

Table 12

		Mean Square	F	Sig.
	Regression	2.103	20.312	.000b
	Residual	.104

 

Table 13

Model		Standardized Coefficients	T	Sig.
		Beta
1	(Constant)		7.899	.000
	TEP	.474	4.507	.000

 

 

Mediation Through Process Macro by Preacher and Hayes

Outcome Variable

TEP

Table 14. Model Summary

R	R-sq	MSE	F	df1	df2	p
.4860	.2362	.0995	19.1682	2.0000	124.0000	.0000

 

Table 15

	coeff	se	t	P	LLCI	ULCI
constant	1.7289	.4147	4.1690	.0000	.9081	2.5498
TSL	.3221	.0814	3.9553	.0000	.1609	.4833
TEE	.2753	.0814	3.1965	0000	.1048	.4458

 

****************** DIRECT AND INDIRECT EFFECTS OF X ON Y *****************

 

Table 16. The direct effect of X on Y 

Effect	se	t	p	LLCI	ULCI
.3221	.0814	3.9553	.0000	.1609	.4833

 

Table 17. Indirect effect(s) of X on Y

	Effect	BootSE	BootLLCI	BootULCI
TEE	.0857	.0319	.0297	.1545

Conclusion

As per the results of the analysis in the study, it is analyzed that strategic leadership style has a positive impact on employee production, Employee Engagement partially mediates the relationship between strategic leadership and employee performance. As per findings, we came to know that in our 2 hypotheses, both are accepted as assumed.

Since the analysis of the study proved that strategic leadership has a positive impact on employee productivity and employee engagement partially mediates their relationship, therefore, there should be more involvement of strategic leadership in organizations, and it should be strengthened to have effective employee performance.

Limitations

Despite our contribution, the current research has few constraints in terms of time and finance. Although a sufficient number of middle-level employees were selected for this work, this study only covers one regional office of the Higher Education Commission, which is located in Islamabad that restricts this study to generalize in other 03 regions in Pakistan. One more limitation is the cross-sectional design of the study. This study only focuses on middle-level employees. 

Future Research Directions

Under the results of the analysis, some recommendations are given for further studies. Future

Research can be conducted with different employees of HEC like higher-level employees as this research was done in the context of middle-level employees; it can be done on higher-level employees with the same framework. The same framework can conduct in the same sector of different cities of Pakistan. Large sample size can be selected for more precision of results. The same framework can apply to different industry with different in nature like banking, manufacturing, transport, tourism, insurance, etc. Different data collection methods can be used for future studies, like interviews and observation, etc. The longitudinal approach can be used up to the availability of time and financial resources. In the last qualitative research, this method can be used for further work. 

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