Examining perceived leadership styles and effects on extra efforts, effectiveness, and satisfaction in SMEs and non-profit organizations

This study investigated the perceived leadership behaviors and outcomes that exist in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and non-profit organizations and determined the extent of their differences in both organizations based on the full range leadership (FRL) model. The investigation was focused in identifying whether there exist a significant difference between the perceived leadership styles of SMEs and non-profit organizations' managers as well as their effects on the perceived employees willingness to exert extra effort, leaders' effectiveness, and satisfaction with leaders. This descriptive quantitative study's data was collected based on the MLQ (5x-short) Rater Form from a survey of 136 employees of SMEs and non-profit organizations within the U.S. from an online survey vendor's database. The data was analyzed with the Pearson correlation and independent sample t-test in measuring the relationships between the study's criterion and predictor variables as well as significant differences of the perceived managers' leadership behaviors and their outcomes in the two organizations. The findings indicated that the managers of the SMEs and non-profit organizations in this study were perceived to be using transformational leadership and transactional contingent reward. In effect, there was no significant difference in the extent the managers exhibited these leadership behaviors in both organizations; and there were no significant differences in their outcomes in relation to perceived employees' extra effort, leaders' effectiveness, and satisfaction with their leaders. Even though the findings support FRL model's augmentation effects to combine transformational leadership with transactional leadership, a further research may be required with a much larger sample size and in a longitudinal study to corroborate the findings in both businesses' domains.