Procrastination Patterns of Transactional and Transformational Leaders

Sandeep Singh Assistant Professor Department of Management Punjabi University Regional Center for IT and Management

Dr. Ran Singh Dhaliwal Professor SMS, Punjabi University Patiala, Punjab, India

Abstract

In this modern era creation of surplus or maximization of profits has emerged as a prime focus of organizational performance. In recent past decades procrastination and leadership style had been studied as an influencing factor in relation to performance. Enormous studied were conducting on leadership styles and procrastination with behavioural variables but no study established directly relationship of procrastination with leadership styles. The present study was an attempt to fill this gap and an effort to study relationship between procrastination and Leadership styles. The data was collected from 15 Textile Factories which were selected conveniently from five district of Punjab. The number of respondents was 100 managers. Simple random (probability) sampling technique was conducted to collect the responses. The demographic information was also gathered from the respondents. Two questionnaires Pure Procrastination Scale (Steel, 2010) and Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Leaders Rater Form short (Bass & Avolio, 2004) were used at five point Likert scale. The reliability of questionnaires was also tested by Cronabach’s alpha which was moderate. Descriptive Statistics was performed. Correlation and Regression were used to test the hypothesis. There was positive and highly significant relationship was found between procrastination and transformational leadership style. Regression analysis was showing that transformational leadership had significant relationship and impact on the procrastination . Limitations of study, implication and scope of research in future were also discussed in the study.

Key words: Procrastination, Leadership Styles, Transformational, Textile, Age, Experience

Introduction

Organizational performance is remained a center area for the researcher. Human elements are studied time to time by various researchers, directly or indirectly affects organizational performance. It is evident that human behavior related elements like motivation, stress, leadership, attitude, burnout, personality, culture and procrastination etc. contribute to organizational performance. The Barrick et al. (2001) study, which was a meta-analysis of previous meta-analyses, found that conscientiousness and emotional stability were the only personality predictors whose validities generalized in the prediction of overall work performance. Ashtari at al., (2009) found that increasing severity of burnout results in more workers performance inability. Likert, (1961) argued that it is the behavior and style of leaders that has a bearing on the organizations’ success and hence allured the Scholars towards studying and identifying the behavior/styles of leaders that boosts the corporate performance Kahai et al, (2000) contended that transformational leadership increases group performance by overcoming social loafing among members. Baumeister & Scher, (1988) depicted procrastination as it is a lazy, self-indulgent habit of putting things off for no reason. The study had showed that, it was self-defeating behavior that it lowered the quality of performance, because one ended up with less time to work. From the above studies it is concluded that organizational performance is affected by the human behavior related elements.

Conceptual Framework

Procrastination refers to the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time. The Latin origins of pro, meaning “forward, forth, or in favor of,” and crastinus, meaning “of tomorrow”. All conceptualizations of procrastination recognize that there must be a postponing, delaying, or putting off of a task or decision. Procrastination contains the self-defeating behavior pattern marked by short-term benefits and long-term costs. The concept of procrastination is the delaying of a task that was originally planned despite expecting to be worse off for the delay” (Van Eerde, 2003). A competing tripartite model has divided procrastination into avoidance, arousal, and decisional. (Steel 2010) Avoidant procrastinators are those who have fear of failure and they avoid the tasks. And decisional procrastinators are those who can never make decisions or delay decisions. Arousal procrastinators are those who complete or take action at the last movement they avoid the task due to enjoy short time pleasure.

Leadership of management has been an important area of concern to behavior scientists for long time. Leadership is an important attributes of management because management always indulge in planning activities, organizing appropriate structure and control resources. Leadership are interpersonal influence exercised in the situation and the directed through communication process, towards the attainment of a specific specified goal or goals. Leadership styles are the patterns of behavior which leader adopts in influencing the behavior of his followers. Every leader develops a pattern in the way he handles his subordinates or followers in various situation. The leadership style is the result of the philosophy, personality and experience of the leader. It also depends upon the types of the followers and the conditions prevailing in the organization. In the context of organized system, management oriented styles in the form of leadership are considered as a process of influencing and supporting other to work enthusiastically towards achieving objectives. (Keys & Case 1990).These styles which in a way are orientations of management tend to influence the efficiency and effectiveness of organization and performance and satisfaction of subordinates on the other. (Blake & Mountain, 1982) .

Need of Study

In this modern era creation of surplus or maximization of profits has emerged as a prime focus of organizational performance. More or less organizational performance is nothing than the sum total performance of organizational members including employees, stakeholders, management etc. In behaviour study although the factor influencing performance especially other than financial incentives have attracted the attention of researcher: stress, burnout, conflict, leadership, personality, procrastination etc. are certain identified variables which were found significantly directly or indirectly are associated with performance. In recent past decades procrastination had been studied as an influencing factor in relation to performance viz. a viz. So there is requirement to study association between procrastination, leadership style by which the performance can be determined by relevant contribution of relationship which exits in these variables.

Review of Literature

Harris and Sutton (1983) who expressed that some type of procrastination behaviour was beneficial for organization. Sharma, (1997) found the determinants of task procrastination behaviour at actual work place in an industrial organization and one of the three personal characteristics (frustration, tolerance) and four out of seven task characteristics (task ambiguity, deadline pressure, cooperation needed for completing the task, and feedback) were also found to be significantly related to task procrastination. Milgram and Tenne, (2000) correlated decisional and task avoidant procrastination with the personality traits. Senecal et al. (2003) proposed and test a model of role conflict and academic procrastination. . De Hoogh et al. (2005) examined the relationship between personality traits and both transactional and charismatic leadership. Steel (2007) reflected the correlation between procrastination and various personality traits and also highlighted the cause effect relation. Thakkar (2009) examined different theories on the reasons why students procrastinate on their academic assignments. Steel, (2010) measured three types of procrastination name arousal, avoidant and decisional. The validity of the avoidance, arousal and decisional model was reviewed here, first meta-analytically and then factor analytically, using a large sample of respondents. Fatimah, et al. (2011) explored that procrastination could be related to fear of failure which can be lessened by competence expectancy and intrinsic motivation. Alkathtanin et al. (2011) examined the impact of leadership style and personality on leading change capabilities of managers Ghofrani (2012) revealed the relationship between the personality traits and the leadership style. Poor (2012) examined that conscientiousness was acted as the predictor of procrastination. Steel and Ferrari (2013) revealed that procrastination mediated the relationship between sex and education, providing further support that men are lagging behind women academically because of lower self-regulatory skills.

Gap Analysis

From the extensive literature review it was analyzed that there was no study which directly establish relationship between procrastination and leadership styles. But both of these variables were studied with personality so by this we can estimate that there might be collaboration between these two variables. De Hoogh et al. (2005) examined the inverse relationship between transaction leadership styles and consciousness and Poor (2012) examined that conscientiousness was acted as the predictor of procrastination.

Research Methodology

The current study was conducted to establish relationship between procrastination and leadership styles. The data was collected from 15 Textile Factories which were selected conveniently from five district of Punjab. Simple random (probability) sampling technique was conducted to collect the responses. Minimum 45% data was collected from each factory. The sampling unit was managers including senior managers, general managers, deputy general managers and assistant managers. The demographic information is also gathered from respondents. The number of respondents was 100 managers including 91 male and 9 female. The survey included age, experience and gender. Two questionnaire Pure Procrastination Scale (Steel, 2010) and Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Leaders Rater Form short (Bass & Avolio, 2004) were used at five point Likert scale. The reliability of this questionnaire was also tested by Cronabach’s alpha which was moderate. Pure Procrastination scale contains 12 items and MLQ has 45 items. SPSS was used for the analysis purpose.

Objectives of Study

1. To study the relationship between procrastination and Transactional Leadership Style.

2. To study the relationship between procrastination and Transformational Leadership Style

3. To study the impact of leadership styles on procrastination.

Hypothesis

1. H 0 : There was no significant relationship between procrastination and Transactional Leadership Style.

2. H 0 :There was no significant relationship procrastination and Transformational Leadership Style

3. H 0 : There was no impact of leadership styles on procrastination.

Dependent Variable & Independent Variable

Procrastination contains three components avoidant, decisional and general procrastinator. Avoidant procrastinators are those who have fear of failure and they avoid the tasks. Decisional procrastinators (DP) are those who can never make decisions or delay decisions. Arousal procrastinators are those who complete or take action at the last movement due to enjoy short time temptation (Steel 2010).

The components of MLQ5X contain transformational Leadership styles and Transactional Leadership. Transformational Leadership —involves a leader-follower exchange relationship in which the followers feel trust, loyalty, and respect toward the leader, and are motivated to do more than originally expected (Bass,1991). Transformational Leadership Style consists of Idealized influence Attributed, Idealized influence Behaviour (IIB), Inspirational Motivation(IM) , Intellectual Stimulation(IS), Individualized Consideration(IC) and Contingent Reward(CR) Transactional Leadership—involves a leader-follower exchange relationship in which the follower receives some reward related to lower-order needs in return for compliance with the leader’s expectations (Bass,1991).Transactional Leadership styles involve Management by Exception Active (MBEA), Management by Exception Passive (MBEP), Laissez Fair Leadership (LF), Extra Effort (EE), Effectiveness (E) and Satisfaction(S).

Limitations of Study

1. The data was collected from seven factories which were selected randomly but jointly these were not representing particularly any region, state, district.etc.

2. The Textile Industry have wider scope which cover various segments like spinning, terry towel, garment and fabrics, woolen etc. selected factories were not representing any segment of textile.

3. Due to selection of factories conveniently the homogeneity of factories on the basis of small scale, medium scale and large scale was ignored.

Analysis and Interpretation

Before testing the Hypothesis of the study descriptive statistics was analyzed. Table-1 showing that average age of the respondents was 33.42 and SD was 5.033. The average experience of all the respondents was 9.59 with the SD of 4.30.

Reliability Analysis

The reliability of MLQ5X and Pure Procrastination scale was tested. MLQ5X has 45 items and the Cronbach Alpha score was 0.792 which was showing moderate level of reliability and on the other side Pure Procrastination has 12 items with 0.76 with moderate Cronbach alpha.

Table-2 MLQ 5X and Pure Procrastination Scale Reliability Analysis

Correlation Analysis

To tested the hypothesis correlation analysis was conducted between the variables as it hypothesized that

1. H 0 : There was no significant relationship between procrastination and Transactional Leadership Style.

2. H 0 :There was no significant relationship procrastination and Transformational Leadership

Table-3 Correlations
		TM	TS	PRO
TM	Pearson Correlation	.002	.217*	.546**
			.030	.000
	N	100	100	100
TS	Pearson Correlation	.217*	0.9	.012
		.030		.902
	N	100	100	100
PRO	Pearson Correlation	. 546**	.012	0.11
	Sig. (2-tailed)	.000	.902
	N	100	100	100
**. P>0.01 and *. P>0.05

According to Table -3 highly significant positive correlation was found between Procrastination and Transformational Leadership style. The value of the P= 0.546 > 0.01 which was showing positive association of the variables at 0.01 significance level. The positive relationship was found between procrastination and transactional leadership style but result was not significance. The other significance positive relationship was found between transactional and transformational leadership style .The result of the analysis revealed that first hypothesis (H 0 : there was no significant relationship between procrastination and Transactional Leadership Style) was accepted and second hypothesis (H 0 : There was no significant relationship procrastination and Transformational Leadership style) was rejected.

Inter - Dimensional Correlation

In addition to that Inter-Dimensional Correlation was performed between dimensions of procrastination, transformational and transactional leadership style.

Table -4 Inter –Dimensional Correlation

*P>0.05 and **P>0.01

Table-4 of Inter-Dimensional Correlation within the dimensions was showing that seven highly significant and four significant correlations between the variables. The results were discussed in details

1. Idealized Influence (Behaviour) had positive and highly significant relation with General procrastination and arousal procrastination.

2. Idealized Influence (Attributed) had positive and highly significant relation with arousal procrastination.

3. Inspirational Motivation had positive and highly significant relation with general procrastination.

4. Intellectual stimulation had positive and highly significant relation with decisional and positive significant relationship with general procrastination.

5. Individual Consideration had positive and highly significant relation with arousal procrastination.

6. Contingent Reward had positive and highly significant relation with arousal procrastination.

7. Management by Exception (Passive) had significant positive relationship with decisional procrastination.

Regression Analysis

As a requirement to test the third hypothesis (H 0 : There was no impact of leadership styles on procrastination.) the result of regression analysis was showing in Table-6.

According to Table No.6 P value (0.92) >0.05 which was reflecting there was no impact of transactional leadership styles on procrastination.

On the other side table -8 showing that transformational leadership styles accounted the prediction of procrastination at highly significant level (P (0.000.) < 0.01). The result was showing that tendency of procrastination was impacted by transformational leadership styles. So from the above discussion our null hypothesis was rejected.

Conclusion

From the above analysis it was analyzed that there was positive and highly significant positive relationship was found between procrastination and transformational leadership style. The Inter-Dimensional Correlation table was showing that generally these types of leaders had tendency of general and arousal procrastination. So there can be a possibility of irrational delay by leaders on the task because of fear of failure and start the work late due to enjoy short temptation. Intellectual stimulation was only components which were highly significantly with decisional procrastination. These types of leaders which promote high level intellectual encouragement they might be delay in decision making the reason can be due to the value of decisions. Intellectual Stimulation had highly significant positive relationship with decisional procrastination.

Regression analysis was showing that transformational leadership had significant relationship and impact on the procrastination . Baumeister & Scher, (1988) depicted” procrastination as it is a lazy, self-indulgent habit of putting things off for no reason. The study had showed that, it was self-defeating behavior that it lowered the quality of performance, because one ended up with less time to work.” If it was assumed that procrastination has negative impact on the performance then the result was might be inverse to Bass & Avolio, (2004) which expressed that “ Transformational Leadership being the most effective type of leadership then slowly progressing down to Transactional Leadership middle of the road leadership, and lastly, passive avoidant Leadership, or lack of leadership.” The result was also against with Kahai et al, (2000) contended that transformational leadership increases group performance by overcoming social loafing among members. So transformational leadership styles might not effective and improve the performance. If it is considered that Transformational leadership style was effective then It can be supported by Harris & Sutton (1983) who expressed that some type of procrastination behaviour was beneficial for organization. Transactional Leadership had no significant relationship with procrastination, But Management by exception passive leaders were significant and positive relationship with decisional procrastination. So from the all discussion it was concluded that procrastination is irrational delay of behaviour which might be or might be not affect the performance. These discussions provided prediction for future research

1. Transformational Leadership is effective or not effective leadership styles.

2. If procrastination leaves effect on transformational leadership style the effect is positive or negative for performance

3. There were some other factors which regulate the relationship between procrastination and leadership styles like motivation, work environment, etc.

Practical Implications and Scope of Future Research

Enormous studied were conducting on leadership style and procrastination with other variables but no study established directly and indirectly relationship of procrastination with leadership styles. Still in the organizational set up there was a gap of alternatives to come over the negative consequence of procrastination. The problem should be treated from root level either in organizational set up or academics in order to maximization of surplus and satisfaction of individual.

It was accomplished that procrastination is irrational delay of behaviour which avail short term benefits but long run cost. It can be assumed that there are some other factors like motivation, work environment, etc. which moderate the association between procrastination and leadership styles. So further there is a bigger scope of future research and to test three predictions which were explained and many more.

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