Research Proposal :

Leadership Styles and Staff Retention: How

leadership styles affect staff retention?
1.0 Title
The working title of this research is initially drafted as Leadership Styles and
Staff Retention: How leadership styles affect staff retention?
2.0 Background of the Study
Leadership is an incremental component that centers the existence, survival and
functioning of any group or organisation. Indeed, the organisations recognise that their
success is highly-dependent upon the quality and effectiveness of this dimension. There
are two main functions that leaders are bounded to perform. The first is central on
accomplishing the task towards the attainment of goals such as initiating actions,
keeping members attention on the goal, clarifying issues, helping the group develop a
procedural plan, evaluating the work done and making expert information available. The
second is on developing members feelings to maintain the strength of the organisation.
Leaders are expected to keep interpersonal relations, arbitrate excuse, provide
encouragement, give chance to divert, stimulate self-direction and increase
interdependence among organisational members.
As such, staff retention falls under the umbrella of the second function. Staff
retention is a challenge for contemporary organisations as the skills shorten worsens.
Various retention strategies are in place including rewards and recognition program,
training and development, flexible working arrangements and others. How people want
to be managed and how people are being managed and the gap between contributes to
either high or low staff retention rates. Since, in reality, the gap is relatively wide and
that organisations are finding difficulties in responding to such, there still remains the
question on why and how employees will remain to their employment and contribute to
a greater degree to the organisation. The challenge is tended on the conduct of the
leaders; surprisingly though, very little attention has been given to the impact of
leadership-related variables on staff retention.

3.0 Statement of the Problem

The problem that will be addressed in the study is how various leadership styles
implicate staff retention and how leaders affect staff retention in general. How
leadership styles determine the levels of turnover within the organisation will be
explored. In lieu with this, the research will seek to answer the following specific
questions:
1) What are the qualities of leaders that generally influence staff retention?
How leaders influence staff to remain in their current jobs?
2) What are the factors that cause staff to leave the workforce? Why do they
leave?
3) Under what circumstances leadership styles can reduce the rate of low
staff retention?
4) To what extent does leadership styles in an organisation has an influence
of staff retention?
5) How different leaders respond to the challenge of staff retention? How
organisations through leaders manage its talentship?
4.0 Objectives of the Study
The aim of this study is to draw conclusions and to provide benchmark practices
on how leadership styles could likely to affect staff retention. To conduct an exploratory
research on the influences and implications of leadership styles to staff retention is the
purpose of the research. The specific objectives that follow will be addressed.
1)

To outline the qualities of the leaders that generally affects staff

retention

2)

To determine the factors that affect staff retention and understand

the rationale for leaving employment

3)

To distinguish conditions and situations that leaders contribute to

staff retention

4)

To analyse the degree of influence of leadership styles on staff

retention

5)

To evaluate organisational
management of talentship

practices to

staff retention and

5.0 Contributing Literatures

A literature review will be provided in the actual study, which will be put in the
second chapter. Literatures will be about the studies on leadership styles and staff
retention. Literatures will be acquired from online journal databases such as Blackwell
Synergy, Emerald and Questia. Literatures will be reviewed to increase the knowledge
about the topic and to help in the analysis of data. In this proposal is the initial literature
review of two books and a journal article.
The first book is written by Diane Arthur in 2001 entitled The Employee
Recruitment and Retention Handbook. Arthur provides comprehensive, practical advice
to employers to get and keep the people they need and covers such vital topics as what
workers want; why workers leave; where they are; and what best-practice companies
are doing to attract and retain the talent necessary to remain competitive. The author
also discusses both traditional and new strategies to recruiting and retaining staff.
Keeping Your Valuable Employees: Retention Strategies for Your Organizations
Most Important Resource is the second book. Written by Suzanne Dibble in 1999, the
book offers a practical, realistic approach to keeping the best employees as it draws on
good theory and offers excellent advice. The author understands how to apply todays
best ideas in human resources management to businesses large and small. Dibble
shares her human resources experience and provides hands-on tools for retaining
those people who are key to an organizations success.
The three journal articles are taken from the Journal of Leadership Studies. The
first article provides points for retention including: re-recruit top performers before they
get a better offer; implement a comprehensive mentoring program; offer better career
visibility; explore various work options for retirement-age employees; use explicit
ranking systems tied to incentives; consider changes in managerial style to
accommodate younger workers; emphasize cross-training and diverse experiences to
build skills and maintain employee interest; Emphasize cross-training and diverse
experiences to build skills and maintain employee interest and broaden the concept of
retention.
6.0 Research Plan
Research Philosophy

The research will be approached based on an interpretivism view. Interpretivism

is the necessary research philosophy for this study because it allows the search, of the
details of the situation, to understand the reality or perhaps a reality working behind
them. It is necessary to explore the subjective meanings motivating peoples actions in
order to understand their actions.
Research Design
The study will be exploratory in nature because it aims to determine the present
facts as well as facts that are not yet explored about the phenomenon. Exploratory
research will enable the study to look at the problem in both descriptive and exploratory
manner. It will look into the problem by exploring the views of different sets of
respondents, as well as by exploring different literatures related with the study.
Data Collection
Primary and secondary research will be conducted in the study. In primary
research, the study will survey leaders and employees for the purpose of determining
how leadership styles impact staff retention. A semi-structured questionnaire will be
developed and it will be used as the survey tool for the study. It is planned that the
questionnaire will have a 5 point Likert Scale, as well as ranking questions.
The literature reviews to be presented in the second chapter of the study will
represent the secondary data of the study. The secondary sources of data will come
from published articles from business journals, theses and related studies on
organizational administration and dealing staff retention. Acquiring secondary data are
more convenient to use because they are already condensed and organized.