Transformational Leadership Role on Work Performance under the COVID 19 Pandemic in Zimbabwe

Tonderai  Mathende; Asif Mahbub  Karim

COVID-19 outbreak has caused many changes in employees' routine and activities, as well as in managerial leadership styles in mitigating the COVID-19's implications. During the COVID 19 era, leadership practices have been criticized as insignificant. To a considerable degree, this is due to the reactive mode and mismatching solutions offered to the prevailing situation by leaders in trying to enhance employees’ perceptions in their safety, welfare and work tools support. However, as transformational leadership is the most suitable leadership style to lead human resources in uncertain environments. The objective of this research is to examine transformational leadership role on work performance among Beverage’s manufacturing companies who have been working during the pandemic. This is quantitative research which comprises of a sample of 369 employees who were selected using probability sampling where a self-administered survey questionnaire was administered on employees and the responses were analyzed using various statistical techniques. The results show that each dimension of transformational leadership predicts work performance, although not at the same extent. This pandemic inevitably pushed for new leaderships skills that can become an integral part of the post-pandemic world. Hence the research provides important practical implications for improving employee's performance through appropriate leadership traits.

Alheet, A., Adwan, A., Areiqat, A., Zamil, A., & Saleh, M. (2021). The effect of leadership styles on employees’ innovative work behavior. Management Science Letters, 11(1), 239-246.
Arif, S., & Akram, A. (2018). Transformational leadership and organizational performance: the mediating role of organizational innovation. SEISENSE Journal of Management, 1(3), 59-75.
Arokiasamy, A., & Tat, H. (2020). Exploring the influence of transformational leadership on work engagement and workplace spirituality of academic employees in the private higher education institutions in Malaysia. Management Science Letters, 10(4), 855-864.
Aslan, H. (2019). The Mediating Role of Leader-Member Exchange in The Effect of Transformational Leadership on Employee Performance and Job Satisfaction. Business and Economics Researches Book, 201-214.
Baba, M. M. (2019). Transformational Approach to Higher Educational Leadership, International Journal on Leadership. Vol. 7(1), pp. 22-34.
Buil, I., Martínez, E., & Matute, J. (2019). Transformational leadership and employee performance: The role of identification, engagement and proactive personality. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 77, 64-75.
Chan, S. W., Ang, S. F., Andleeb, N., Ahmad, M. F., & Zaman, I. (2019). The influence of transformational leadership on organization innovation in Malaysian manufacturing industry. International Journal of Supply Chain Management, 8(2), 971-976.
Choudhary, N., Kumar, R., & Philip, P. J. (2016). Effects of transformational leadership on follower's organizational citizenship behavior: The moderating role of culture. Prabandhan: Indian Journal of Management, 9(7), 23-33.
Diab-Bahman, R., & Al-Enzi, A. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on conventional work settings. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy.
Eden, D., Ganzach, Y., Flumin-Granat, R., & Zigman, T. (2010). Augmenting means efficacy to boost performance: Two field experiments. Journal of Management, 36(3), 687-713.
Figueiredo, P., & Sousa, M. J. (2016). Leaders and Followers: The Leadership Style Perceived in Modern Organizations. In Handbook of Research on Information Architecture and Management in Modern Organizations (pp. 195-218). IGI Global.
Garg, V., Singh, V. P., & Raj, V. (2017). Development of Water Resources in India. Basingstoke, England, Springer.
Hassi, A. (2019). Empowering leadership and management innovation in the hospitality industry context: The mediating role of climate for creativity. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Hossain, M. I., Polas , M. R. H., Rahman, M. M., Islam, T., & Jamadar, Y. (2020). An Exploration of COVID-19 Pandemic and its Consequences on FMCG Industry in Bangladesh. Journal of Management Info, 7(3), 145-155. https://doi.org/10.31580/jmi.v7i3.1484
Imran, R., Fatima, A., Zaheer, A., Yousaf, I., & Batool, I. (2012). How to boost employee performance: investigating the influence of transformational leadership and work environment in a Pakistani perspective. Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, 11(10), 1455-1462.
Jorgensen, T. D., Kite, B. A., Chen, P. Y., & Short, S. D. (2018). Permutation randomization methods for testing measurement equivalence and detecting differential item functioning in multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis. Psychological methods, 23(4), 708.
Khalifa, G. S., Binnawas, M. S., Alareefi, N. A., Alkathiri, M. S., Alsaadi, T. A., Alneadi, K. M., & Alkhateri, A. (2021). The Role of Holistic Approach Service Quality on Student’s Behavioural Intentions: The Mediating Role of Happiness and Satisfaction’. City University eJournal of Academic Research (CUeJAR), 3(1), 12-32.
Khaliq, M., Usman, A., & Ahmed, A. (2021). Effect of Leadership Style on Working Culture and Employees Motivation. The Journal of Educational Paradigms, 3(1), 166-170.
Koopmans, L., Bernaards, C., Hildebrandt, V., Van Buuren, S., Van der Beek, A. J., & de Vet, H. C. (2013). Development of an individual work performance questionnaire. International journal of productivity and performance management.
Krejcie, R. V., & Morgan, D. W. (1970). Determining sample size for research activities. Educational and psychological measurement, 30(3), 607-610.
Lai, F. Y., Tang, H. C., Lu, S. C., Lee, Y. C., & Lin, C. C. (2020). Transformational leadership and job performance: the mediating role of work engagement. SAGE Open, 10(1), 2158244019899085.
LaRocca, M. A., and Groves, K. S. (2021). Transformational Leadership in Extreme Contexts: Associations with Posttraumatic Growth and Self-Efficacy Among Combat Veterans. Armed Forces & Society,
Li, H., Sajjad, N., Wang, Q., Muhammad Ali, A., Khaqan, Z., & Amina, S. (2019). Influence of transformational leadership on employees’ innovative work behavior in sustainable organizations: Test of mediation and moderation processes. Sustainability, 11(6), 1594.
Ma, M. H., & Yang, Q. S. (2020). How does transformational leadership work on COVID-19? An empirical evidence from China. Journal of Innovative Studies, 1(2).
Magasi, C. (2021). Moderating Effect of Individualised Consideration on the Relationship between Intellectual Stimulation and the Performance of Banking Sector Employees.
Manzoor, F., Wei, L., Nurunnabi, M., Subhan, Q. A., Shah, S. I. A., & Fallatah, S. (2019). The impact of transformational leadership on job performance and CSR as mediator in SMEs. Sustainability, 11(2), 436.
Mashavira, N. (2016). Performance management in family and nonfamily owned SMEs in Zimbabwe and South Africa, Interim, Interdisciplinary Journal, 15 (2), 32-52.
Monika, M., & Kaliyamurthy, K. (2017). Effect of Organizational Climate in Job Satisfaction among the Employees. Asian Journal of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, 7(8), 217-227.
Muchiri, M. K., McMurray, A. J., Nkhoma, M., & Pham, H. C. (2020). Mapping antecedents of innovative work behavior: A conceptual review. The Journal of Developing Areas, 54(4).
Munyeki, N., & Were, S. (2017). Influence of transformational leadership on the performance of project based organizations: A case of International Livestock Research Institute. International Journal of Project Management, 1(3), 41-60.
Nangia, M., & Mohsin, F. (2020). Identifying VUCA factors in a pandemic era–a frame-work focused on Indian IT industry. Journal of Critical Reviews, 7(7), 931-936.
Ngaithe, L. N., K’Aol, G. O., Lewa, P., & Ndwiga, M. (2016). Effect of idealized influence and inspirational motivation on staff performance in state owned enterprises in Kenya, European Journal of Business and Management, 8(30), 6-13.
Nguyen, H. M., Mai, L. T., & Huynh, T. L. (2019). The role of transformational leadership toward work performance through intrinsic motivation: A study in the pharmaceutical field in vietnam. The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics, and Business, 6(4), 201-212.
Pasha, M. A., & Ur Rehman, M. Z. (2020). Impact of transformational leadership and psychological empowerment on meaningful work, moderating effect of organizational culture. Abasyn University Journal of Social Sciences, 13(1).
Renjith, V., Renu, G., and George, A. (2015). Transformational leadership in Nursing’, International Journal of Science Research and management studies, 2(2), 112-118
Sher, L. (2020). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide rates. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, 113(10), 707-712.
Spinelli, A., & Pellino, G. (2020). COVID-19 pandemic: perspectives on an unfolding crisis. Journal of British Surgery, 107(7), 785-787.
Sulasmi, E., & Tanjung, H. (2020). Bridging The Way Towards Sustainability Performance Through Safety, Empowerment and Learning: Using Sustainable Leadership as Driving Force. Journal of Security & Sustainability Issues, 10.
Vu, T., Vu, M., & Hoang, V. (2020). The impact of transformational leadership on promoting academic research in higher educational system in Vietnam. Management Science Letters, 10(3), 585-592.
Yom, S. S., & Gibbs, I. C. (2021). Leadership Versus Service: What’s the Difference? Is There a Difference?. In Career Development in Academic Radiation Oncology (pp. 297-309). Springer, Cham.

In-Text Citation: (Mathende & Karim, 2022)
To Cite this Article: Mathende, T., & Karim, A. M. (2022). Transformational Leadership Role on Work Performance under the COVID 19 Pandemic in Zimbabwe. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(1), 338–352.

Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s)
Published by HRMARS (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Open Access Journal

Transformational Leadership Role on Work Performance under the COVID 19 Pandemic in Zimbabwe

Tonderai Mathende, Asif Mahbub Karim

Further Information

Our Journals

Get intouch with us