A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP OF SELF-PERCEIVED LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS AND STYLE TO JOB SATISFACTION OF DATA PROCESSING AND OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT PERSONNEL

Leadership and job satisfaction are generally recognized as possessing importance to an organization because of their relationship to the organization's functioning. These elements may carry additional importance within the data processing industry because of the industry's current and projected expansion and the concern expressed about the improvement of productivity in this field. The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship of leadership effectiveness and leadership style to job satisfaction, as well as the relationship of leadership effectiveness to job satisfaction while controlling the variable leadership style, of a sample of data processing and operational management personnel in data processing service bureaus. Style was measured with the Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) Scale. Effectiveness was assessed using the LPC Scale, in addition to the Leader Match Scales. And satisfaction was measured with the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (Short Form). Data were obtained through a mailing of questionnaires to the Data Processing Management Association's members categorized as data processing and operational management personnel in data processing service bureaus, with a follow-up mailing to initial nonrespondents being conducted. The mailing groups returning usable questionnaires were treated as one group following chi-square test and t-test analyses determining no significant differences between the two groups. The sample group represented 393 management personnel. Data were analyzed using the point biserial correlation and t-ratio formulas, with the two-tailed significance level established at .05 in each hypothesis. The results indicated that the null hypotheses stating that there is no significant relationship between effectiveness and satisfaction and between style and satisfaction of the entire sample could not be rejected. The null hypotheses stating that there is no significant relationship between the effectiveness and satisfaction of the relationship-oriented leaders and of the task-oriented leaders were rejected, with a negative correlation and a positive correlation determined in these testings, respectively. Based upon these findings, it was concluded that the relationship between effectiveness and satisfaction of data processing and operational management personnel is leadership style-specific. Implications of the findings for these management personnel, their supervisors and personnel managers are presented in the study.