Determination of the Relationship Between Leadership Perceptions of Blue Collars and Organizational Outcomes by Using MLQ Analysis

AbstractThe relationship between leadership and organizational outcomes was investigated by some academicians. Since leadership is a phenomenon that keeps numerous characteristics together and that is the basis of shaping organizational structures, its relationship with organizational outcomes is of particular concern both to the academic world and the business world in practice. Within this scope, the relationship between several different leadership models and organizational outcomes was investigated; however, in the researches, leadership perception studies were carried out only for white collar personnel. When it is considered that particularly most of the employees (followers) working in the production sector are blue collar employees, it is thought that investigating the leadership perceptions of blue collars plays an important role in determining the contribution of leadership types to organizational outcomes.In this study, with the information obtained from 296 blue collar employees who work in food and manufacturing industry in Kocaeli and Istanbul, heavily industrialized provinces in our country, by means of multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ), the relationship of leadership behaviors with organizational outcomes (efficiency, satisfaction and extra effort) was investigated. When the multifactor leadership scale (MLQ) was applied to the participants, it was seen that the nine components that shows all leadership dimensions stated by Bass were not clearly decomposed from each other. As a result of reliability and internal consistency tests applied to these data, active and passive leadership dimensions were revised. As a result of the analysis conducted considering these data, the relationships of active and passive leadership dimensions with organizational outcomes were investigated and it was found out that organizational outcomes had a positive strong relationship with active leadership dimension