Sustainable Management for Managers and Engineers

5Styles of Leadership and Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility

As there are few empirical studies analysing how styles of leadership influence perceptions of social responsibility (SR), this present research project seeks to help offset that shortcoming. This correspondingly strives to identify whether leadership styles (transformational, transactional and laissez-faire) influence employee perceptions as regards the SR developed by their companies. The research took place at a consultancy through the application of a questionnaire. The results demonstrate how every leadership style returns a positive result in terms of employee SR perceptions. However, transformational leadership was the style that obtained the highest overall average. This is in line with how such leaders may influence their members of staff through development of a collective vision, and inspiring others to look beyond their own respective interests in seeking to generate improvements for the organization and the community.

5.1. Introduction

Leaders perform a fundamental role not only in implementing social responsibility (SR) practices but also in the way employees perceive the organization’s respective SR. These perceptions, in conjunction with building a positive image of the organization, hold relevance as they generate significant influence over the attitudes and behaviours of workers, which in turn impacts on their personal performance and that of the organization. Companies developing social ...