Relationship between Transactional Leadership, Organisational Leadership and Job security in the public sector during Covid 19

Abstract

This study was performed to explore the relationship between transactional leadership, organisational leadership, and job security within the public sector of South Africa during the Covid 19 pandemic. The pandemic caused many job losses which affected in job security in South Africa as well as globally. Due to the importance of the public sector contribution to the economic activity of South Africa, there was a need to pinpoint how transactional leadership and organisational leadership affected job security during these trying times.

A literature review was conducted and up to five definitions were sourced from recent literature for transactional leadership, organisational leadership and job security. Possible relationships were also investigated and it was found that there is an unclear relationship between transactional leadership and organisational leadership, a positive relationship between organisational leadership and job security and a strong and positive relationship between transactional leadership and job security.

From the pooled results it was found that the organisations sampled are not homogeneous and caution should be taken in generalising on the statistical results. Negative correlations were found in the relationship between transactional leadership and organisational leadership as well as transactional leadership and job security. A positive correlation was found between job security and organisational leadership. The regression analysis reported that organisational leadership and transactional leadership overall explained 12% of the total variance on job security which is a small effect in practise. The findings indicate that these managers should not make any significant changes to their leadership styles during trying times. The study also revealed that employees require increased communication from their managers in terms of their performance as well as clear direction of the goals being pursued, this is likely to increase how satisfied they are in their jobs thus also affecting job security. The practical significance of these results is small resulting in the prediction of job security not being very meaningful.

Possible limitations identified revealed that due to the relatively newness of the Covid-19 pandemic, the timing of this study could be considered premature. The inclusion of only two leadership styles was also found to be limited due to a plethora of leadership styles being available. Based on this, as well as the results obtained from the findings, further research is recommended to establish a more practical relationship between transactional leadership, organisational leadership and job security during the Covid-19 pandemic.