The Role of Leadership Styles in Enhancing Employee Productivity: A Meta-Analysis

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 2023, 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). Industry-specific 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.