The preferred leadership and followership styles of employees in state- and privately-owned organizations in Serbia and Macedonia

Abstract

The aim of the study is to determine the preferred leadership and followership styles, as well as the statistical significance of differences between those preferences among individuals employed in both state and privately owned companies in Serbia and Macedonia. Leadership and followership are important for the efficient functioning of all organizations. Leadership and followership issues are particularly important in transition countries, such as Serbia and Macedonia, where directors general of organizations are no longer appointed politically but are leaders selected according to their capacities. Nationality and type of the organization ownership, the relation between gender and position occupied by an individual within a business organization (a manager, an employee), as well as the preferred style of leadership and followership, have been analyzed. The study was carried out on the sample of 172 participants from Serbia and Macedonia. The data were collected by means of the Personal Questionnaire for Followership Styles designed by Robert E. Kelley (1998), and Fiedler’s LPC scale (Least Preferred Coworker, 1984) which was used to evaluate the preferred leadership style. The results indicate that there is no difference in the preferred leadership styles in relation to gender, nationality or positions occupied by the company employees, but there is a difference between the employees who are in the state- or in the privately-owned companies. The participants working in state owned companies prefer a permissive leadership style, i.e. relationship-oriented. The results show that most of the employees in both state- and privately-owned business organizations prefer an active followership, with statistically significant differences compared to the other followership styles. No relationship was found between gender, nationality, type of organization ownership and position occupied by the individual within a business organization, for the preferred followership style.