Relationship between intrinsic motivation and gender in the context of x and y leadership styles in the macedonian electrical appliances sector

Abstract

Leadership is one of the most researched topics in the contemporary business organisations. Over the decades, leadership and various leadership styles have proven to be key to successful organisations. As the world is currently experiencing many transformations and new generations of employees take over, the leadership styles evolve and leaders seek for new approaches to motivate and inspire employees in achieving growth both on individual and organisational level. Accordingly, this paper explores two distinctive leadership styles, more specifically, democratic or transformational and autocratic or transactional. The research is based on the McGregors’Theory X and Theory Y of leadership. As such, X Theory argues that employees avoid tasks and responsibility, desire to be controlled and lack ambition, while Y Theory assumes that employees are creative and positive about their work, and take actions to accomplish the organisational goals. Furthermore, the paper builds upon the theoretical concept of the previous research body on leadership styles and the importance of intrinsic motivation. The concept of intrinsic motivation is further enriched with the gender perspective. The analysis anticipates quantitative research based on a previously validated instrument that was implemented among 187 employees in the biggest Macedonian electrical appliances retail company. Findings suggest that there is positive relationship between Y leadership styles and intrinsic motivation. In addition, it was identified the both male and female demonstrate similar behavior relative to Intrinsic motivation. This research endeavour, shall contribute towards understanding the current practices and desired leadership styles in a dynamic organizational setting that seeks physical interaction with the customers in a highly competitive setting such as the electric appliances retail industry in the Republic of North Macedonia. It offers grounds for further research to overcome the limitations of this paper such as the sample size, male gender prevalence and generalisation for retail industry of electrical appliances as a whole given the administration of the instrument in a single company.