Evaluation of leadership style used at PABC Bank to achieve its goals and objectives










Introduction

PABC Bank is a medium size local commercial bank operating in Sri Lanka. Since its incorporation in 1995, PABC Bank has grown robustly and currently has network of 85 branches and 90 ATM/CDM locations across the country and is staffed by employee cadre of 3,500 (PABC Bank, 2020). This article discusses the influence of leadership in enabling PABC Bank to identify and achieve its goals and objectives. Broad research on leadership has resulted in numerous theories being postulated on it (Northouse, 2004). Despite the numerous theories postulated on leadership there in no universally accepted theory of leadership. Hackman (2002) describes leadership as facilitating teamwork which ensures effective control over human resources, whilst Adair (2006) describes a leader as an individual who is effective at promoting psychological stimuli amongst employees and developing a cohesive and effective employee cadre.


Evaluation of leadership styles at PABC Bank

Broad research on leadership has led to the identification of several types of leadership styles. Out of these several styles, this article focuses on autocratic and participative leadership styles. Sharma and Jain (2013) describe an autocratic leader as individual who has little confidence in employees and achieves the goals and objectives of the organization through the establishment of rigid controls and regulations, adoption of unilateralists philosophy towards organizational decision making, and uses a carrot and stick approach to drive employee performance.

In contrast to the rigid controls and regulations in autocratic leadership, participative leadership is based on the establishment of a forum which promotes collaboration and sharing of information (Wong and Laschinger 2013), prioritizing social aspects in the workplace, and empowerment of employees in the achievement of organizational goals and objectives.

The leadership style adopted at PABC Bank can be associated with autocratic leadership style. Similar to autocratic leadership, PABC leaders have established rigid controls and regulations, make organizational decisions based on unilateralists philosophy, and use a carrot and stick approach to drive employee performance in the achievement of organizational goals and objectives. The benefit of adopting this leadership is that it has enabled the organization to achieve its financial and growth goals and objectives. On the downside, adoption of an autocratic leadership style has resulted in low employee satisfaction and high employee attrition.

Conclusion

Autocratic leadership at PABC Bank has enabled it to achieve its financial and growth goals and objectives at the costs of low employee satisfaction and high employee turnover. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that leadership at PABC Bank view employees as another factor of production rather than the most important and essential resource for their success and sustainability.


References

Adair, J. G. (2006) Creating Indigenous Psychologies: Insights from Empirical Social Studies of the Science of Psychology. In U. Kim, K.-S. Yang, & K.-K. Hwang (Eds.), Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context (p. 467–485). Springer Science + Business Media.

Hackman, J.R. (2002). Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances. Boston, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Northouse, P.G. (2004) Leadership: Theory and Practice (3rd Edition). London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Pan Asia Bank. (2020). A pillar of strength and stability – Annual Report 2020 [Online]. Available at: https://www.pabcbank.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PABC_AR_2020.pdf [Accessed: 2 April 2021]

Shrama, M., and Jain, S. (2013) Leadership management: Principles, models, and theories. Global Journal of Management and Business Studies, 3(3), 309-318

Wong, C.A., and Laschinger, H.K.S. (2013) Authentic leadership, performance, and job satisfaction: The mediating role of empowerment. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 69(4), pp. 947–959.

 

 

Comments

  1. Ruwan HerathApril 5, 2021 at 1:22 AM

    Since author discussing about the autocratic leadership in banking sector, I also feel that this leadership style will work with the banking environment. Mainly the decisions directly link with the financial stability of the company leader should be able to control over all decision with little inputs from the team.
    If author could described little more about which leadership style work with banking sector & the reason behind that, would be much better.

    ReplyDelete

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