JOURNAL ARTICLE Review

Of
G. P. Mishra, Donald Grunewald & Neelufer Aslam Kulkarni. Leadership Styles of

Senior and Middle Level Managers: A Study of Selected Firms in Muscat,

Sultanate of Oman.
International Journal of Business and Management (Vol. 9, No. 11; 2014)
Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education

Introduction
In the journal article, Leadership Styles of Senior and Middle Level Managers: A
Study of Selected Firms in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman by G. P. Mishra1, Donald
Grunewald2 & Neelufer Aslam Kulkarni1, the authors examines the leaderships styles of
senior and middle level management and how their leadership styles and
relationship between managers affect the overall financial performance of some
particular firms in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman.
This article is generally focused on leadership styles and skills. We all will agree that
there is a huge demand of leadership in every organizations and it is almost
impossible to achieve desired goal without proper leadership. An organization faces
lots of challenges from different sources (includes external and internal sources)
and yet they need to recover those before achieving their ultimate goals.
Overcoming those challenges and problems is not an easy task and the success of
an organization depends upon how the organizations senior and middle managers
take steps to form and shape the organizations strategies.
According to the article, the authors find that some researchers express different
opinions as to whether leadership styles can really influence the organizations
performance or not. They have also found other researches who agree the
leadership styles create an impact on organizational performances.
The authors mainly tried to analysis this leadership styles and its impact on certain
selected firms to ensure which leadership theory applied in these firms and its
implication to attain organizational performances.

Objective of the Study:

As I have mentioned earlier that the authors study shows the leadership styles of
senior and middle level managements in certain Fast Moving Consumer Goods Firms
in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, they tried to stand an experiential analysis among

difference leadership approaches and attempted to focus on which method helped

the origination more and how was the impact on their overall financial performance.
The authors also tried to find out whether there is any substantial difference
between the leadership styles of senior and middle level managers in the selected
firms in Muscat or not.

Methodology:
The research conducted by the authors was limited. They focused only the
leadership styles of senior and middle level managers of certain First Moving
Consumer Goods firms located in Muscat, specifically firms listed under the
industrial sector and sub sector food in the Muscat Securities Market were selected
for this study.
The authors introduced some theoretical leadership definitions which includes
autocratic, bureaucratic, democratic, paternalistic, transformational, transaction and
laissez faire. The authors thought was that different firms use different leadership
styles that follow different leadership theories. Thus, they tried to focus on different
leadership styles into the firms overall leadership process and tried to identify
which style is being used and what is the outcome.
The author used statistical analysis to define the connection between the
independent variables (i.e. difference leadership style theories) and the dependent
variable (i.e. financial performance of the firm).
This collection standard resulted in 10 Fast Moving Consumer Goods firms in Muscat
whose main doings were production and distribution of chips, biscuits, oil, mineral
water, juices, and flour and poultry products. Under this study, the authors included
all CEOs as senior level managers, five middle level managers who were selected
randomly from each firm and 55 respondents completed the questionnaire with
83.33% response rate.
The authors collected data through emails followed by the telephone calls and all
the managers of these firms agreed to become a part of this study. For measuring
the financial performance, the authors took the net profits of all firms from 2008 to
2012.

Findings:
The authors did some extensive analysis for this article. They have gathered
samples and then use it to calculate the mean for leadership styles in different
managerial levels.

The authors first question was: what are the leadership styles of the senior and
middle level managers in selected FMCG firms in Muscat? The authors found that
Transformational leadership style is the best among all other styles that managers
use frequently. Transformational leaders achieve the organizations goals by
painting a future vision of the organization and inspiring employees to be a part of
and achieve that vision (Mishra et al, 2014). They have showed that senior level
managers use transformational style more often as compared to the middle level
managers.
Other most used leadership styles followed by transformational styles are
democratic and paternalistic leadership style. (Mishra et al, 2014), Democratic
managers promote the sharing of responsibility, the exercise of delegation and
continual consultation with subordinates, while Paternalistic leaders act as a father
figure and take care of their subordinates as a parent would. Unlike
transformational leadership style, they have found that the middle level managers
use democratic style more often as compared to the senior level managers.
According to their analysis, senior and middle level managers barely use Laissez
Faire leadership style. Laissez-Faire leadership style generally allows top
management to give all rights and powers to workers to make decisions.
The authors adopted a t-test to determine whether there are any significant
differences in the leadership styles of senior and middle level managers in selected
FMCG firms in Muscat or not? They have found that there is no significant difference
in the leadership style. Thus, they inferred that the leadership style of both senior
and middle level managers of FMCG firms in Muscat are similar.
The authors last question was to identify whether leadership style has a significant
correlation with firms performance or not. They have found some different results
there. According to their analysis, Democratic, Paternalistic, Transformational and
Transactional leadership styles are positively correlated to firms performance
whereas Autocratic and Bureaucratic leadership styles are negatively correlated to
firms performance.

Limitations of the study:

I have critically reviewed this article and I believe that there are some limitations
that can be overcome. The following things can be added to make this research
more strong and acceptable:

The article only took financial performance as the measure of organization

performance. They can include other performance measures such as
organizational effectiveness, overall business performance, organizations
competitive advantages etc.

The article showed bureaucratic leadership style as a negative approach.

That is not right in all the cases. Bureaucratic leadership style can be good for
control as commands and expectations are all very clear and well
communicated. This style helps to use resources efficiently under strict rules
and procedures that increase firms efficiency, proficiency and productivity.
But they did not include this part in their analysis.
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/sciences/sociology/social-groups-andorganizations/pros-and-cons-of-bureaucracy

The article suggested that autocratic leadership is negatively correlated to

firms performance. Yet autocratic leadership style can be good for firms
where staffs are new, need to adopt better response to changes in the
external environment and effective direction can only be delivered through
detailed instruction and commands. They skipped this part during their study.
http://www.brighthubpm.com/resource-management/75715-a-critique-of-theautocratic-leadership-style/
The authors have taken samples from only few managers within a few firms.
If they included more firms, then the result would have been different.

Conclusion:
The authors concluded that the managers of different FMCG firms in Muscat use
different leadership styles. But every firms financial performance was not same.
They inferred that it was because the different leadership approaches taken by
different managers. Thus, they concluded that firms performance generally
increases when they adopt certain leadership styles.

Reflection:
Even though there are some limitations, I believe that the authors have
successfully done their research. Based on the analysis and findings, I can say
that the authors decision is rational. I have learned several things from this
article that I can implement in my working real life to develop my efficiency and
effectivity.
By understanding the differences among different leadership roles, I can reach to
a decision that which leadership style will be good for me. To me,
transformational leadership style is the best approach to adopt as it will not only
help us to draw a future vision and strategy for the organization, but also helps
to inspire and motivate employees to be a part of it. In this way, employees can
provide their best in order to achieve the organizations success.

Apart from that, an approach with democratic leadership style will also be a good
option for me to choose as it will allow me and my fellow employees to discuss
the available options and help to find out the necessary steps to implement the
tasks. It will also motivate employees drastically, I believe.
The authors discussed Laissez-faire leadership approach in this article. But I
personally do not believe in this style as it will provide complete liberty to make
decisions to employees regarding the accomplishment of their work. It may lead
to chaos within the organization. But if the number of employees are small and
they are highly efficient, then I may adopt this strategy as it will remove some
tasks from my chest and let the highly efficient employees decide what will be
the best course of action for the tasks they are specialized in.
I strongly believe that if anyone can lead the organization and its employees in a
perfect way, organizations success will come eventually. As this article discusses
all the leadership styles and its implications to the financial performance in the
organization, it will certainly help managers to become more expert in their field.