Association between Supporting Style of Situational Leadership and Employee Performance in Public Universities in Kenya

Abstract

The study examined the association between the supporting style of situational leadership and employee performance in public universities in Kenya. Guided by Situational Leadership Theory, the study adopted a positivist philosophy and descriptive correlational research design. The target population comprised 1,688 heads of departments and office administrators from 27 public universities in Kenya, from which a sample of 323 respondents was selected through stratified random sampling and simple random sampling. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaires and analysed using descriptive (means and standard deviations) and inferential (correlation analysis, chi-square tests, One-Way ANOVA, and ordinal logistic regression) statistics, using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 30. Correlation and Chi-square analyses were significant (p < .001), while regression analysis confirmed a good model fit, χ² (32) = 245.467, p < .001< .05. The model fit yielded a strong Nagelkerke R² value of 0.696, denoting that supporting style of situational leadership had a modestly significant positive relationship with employee performance. This led to rejection of the null hypothesis (Supporting leadership style of situational leadership is not significantly associated with employee performance in public universities in Kenya). The study recommends institutionalising supportive leadership practices to improve employee performance in public universities in Kenya.