International Journal of Organizational Leadership

This study represents a comparative research of the particularities of leadership styles among the owners of small or medium enterprises from Romania and the Netherlands. The three styles used in the present research are autocratic, democratic, and Laissez-faire. The main research instrument of the study was the survey, based on which the researcher determined the dominant leadership style for each respondent. This survey has been applied on a sample of 50 small or medium business owners from Romania and 128 small or medium business owners from the Netherlands. According to the final results, the dominant leadership style in both cases has been the democratic one. Moreover, a series of factors such as the company’s age and owner’s sex which significantly influence the practiced style have identified. 

The present study is an exploratory study that is conducted in 31 companies of automobile parts and accessories manufacturers located at Lahore, Pakistan to integrate dozens of leadership styles available in leadership literature. Factor analysis technique was used for dimensions reduction. SPSS and smart PLS3 software were used for data analysis. The study identified four basic leadership styles that could represent most of the leadership styles available in the literature. The results resemble leadership studies conducted at Ohio and Michigan State Universities with one basic difference of the dimensions suggested by the researchers to explain leadership styles, which are consultation and the relationship instead of task oriented and relationship oriented dimensions. The concept of representative leadership styles will make it simple to understand and handier to practice leadership styles’ theories. The representative leadership styles will add a new perspective about the relationship and mutual exclusiveness of different leadership styles by looking at the bigger picture that was sketched through micro level studies. Research will help organizations in hiring of new leadership and in the setting priorities of leadership development. Though this study has been carried out in Pakistan but due to the size of the sample and extensiveness of the study its results can be considered generalizable.