The Role Of Leadership Styles In Enhancing Employee Productivity: A Meta-Analysis
Keywords:
Leadership styles, employee productivity, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, metaanalysis.Abstract
This meta-analysis examines the relationship between leadership styles and employee productivity across various
organizational contexts. Through systematic review of empirical studies published between 2000 and 2024, we
analyze how transformational, transactional, servant, authentic, and laissez-faire leadership approaches influence
workforce performance. Our analysis of 47 studies (N=18,542 participants) reveals that transformational
leadership demonstrates the strongest positive correlation with productivity (r=0.54), followed by servant
leadership (r=0.48) and authentic leadership (r=0.42). Transactional leadership shows moderate effectiveness
(r=0.36), while laissez-faire approaches correlate negatively with productivity outcomes (r=-0.31). Industryspecific
variations emerged, with transformational leadership particularly effective in knowledge-intensive
sectors, while transactional leadership showed stronger outcomes in manufacturing environments. These findings
highlight the contextual nature of effective leadership and suggest that hybrid approaches tailored to specific
organizational environments may optimize productivity outcomes. This paper contributes to leadership theory by
quantifying style effectiveness and offers practical frameworks for leadership development programs.
