Exploring the Influence of Leadership Styles on Employee Engagement: The Mediating Role of Psychological Empowerment, Organizational Culture, and Job Satisfaction, and the Moderating Impact of Agile HR Practices

Abstract

This research aims to explore the effect of transformational, transactional, and autocratic leadership behaviors on engagement with the focus put on the mediating roles of psychological empowerment, organizational culture and job satisfaction, and the moderating effect of agile HRM practices. This study adopted a quantitative research approach with survey data obtained from 200 employees from various organizations. The regression analysis showed that the transformational leadership had the most significant positive relationship with engagement, followed by transactional leadership while the laissez faire leadership had a negative significant relationship with engagement. The findings of the mediation analysis revealed that of the various variables tested; psychological empowerment, organizational culture and job satisfaction mediated the relationship between leadership styles and engagement with the largest proportion of meditational effect attributable to job satisfaction. It was also discovered that both transformational and transactional leadership styles coupled with HR flexibility enhanced organizational outcomes while reducing the negative effects of laissez-faire leadership style. The research findings offer theoretical contributions to leadership and engagement processes and practical applications of agile human resource management for organizational improvement.