Likert's Management Style Essay

Does employee satisfaction depend on the management style of the managers? Is there a specific management style to use? What are the effects of these management styles to job satisfaction? To answer these questions, one must first understand job satisfaction and the management styles as discussed by Likert’s Theory of Management. In this paper, the researchers attempt to explain these and answer the questions. Job satisfaction shows the amount to which employees are satisfied with their job. Some employees enjoy their job and consider it as part of their lives, while others dislike their jobs and do it because they have to do (Darvish, 2007). Job satisfaction has positive and negative effects based on the employee’s job satisfaction. Positive

Their results confirmed that an effective manager is the one who is close to its subordinates. These managers try to bond all subordinates in a group through communication (Koontz, 2010). There are 4 management styles in Likert’s Theory: Likert system number 1 (autocratic-colonial management), Likert system number 2 (autocratic-charity/benevolent management), Likert system number 3 (consultative/advisory management), Likert system number 4 (participatory management). This study it aims to identify the effect of management style to job satisfaction based on Likert’s theory of management. Only Likert systems 1 and 3 will be used in the

The aspects looked at were the answers of the employees to the given survey conducted by the researchers. Our indicators for job satisfaction is based on (“What Are the Factors Affecting Job Satisfaction?”, Hill). From the four management styles/systems of Likert’s Theory of Management, the researchers only used System 1 - Exploitative Authoritative and System 3 – Consultative. The reason for this is that system 1 is a very strict management style, where there is a poor or no relationship and communication between the manager and the employee at all. System 3 and system 4 – Participative management style has little differences when it comes to the employee-manager relationship, with system 4 having a complete trust with his/her employees. The reason for choosing system 3 instead of system 4 is that when a manager has a complete trust in their employees, the employees might take advantage of the manager and make decisions that is more favorable to the employees and not to the company’s goal or