Effectiveness of Leadership Behaviors in High Power Distance Communities: A Study of Large Scale Enterprises

Abstract

Globally 15% of employees are engaged in their job, two-thirds are not engaged, and 18% are actively disengaged. Employee disengagement costs employers from $450 billion to $550 billion every year. The fundamental reason behind employees' disengagement is ineffective leader's behaviors. Organizations in Pakistan have been facing the issues of employee disengagement, leading to the high cost of disengagement and business failures. The purpose of this research is to explore the factors involved in the leader's behavior that can engage employees of a large-scale enterprise. 25 business leaders (CEOs, MDs and COOs) were selected from Karachi and were interviewed semi-structurally through purposive sampling. Based on the grounded theory, the data was analyzed qualitatively. This study identified several behavioral constructs such as Character, Competence, Passion, Purpose, Wisdom, Engagement, and Effectiveness ensuring a leader’s effectiveness in cultures with high power distance. The results of this study suggest that employees can be engaged using effective leadership behaviors which can lead to outstanding performance and increased growth of an organization. Future studies can consider a more heterogeneous sample of CEOs across Pakistan to increase generalizability. Besides, a more diversified sample across Asia with the countries sharing specific characteristics such as high power distance and religiosity can also be taken into account for future research.