Who's the Boss? The Role of Management Style and Communication in the Workplace

Abstract

Employees job satisfaction plays an important role in a company's success. Research needs to be done to first, understand what factors affect job satisfaction and to then, discover what interventions and policies should be put in place to increase job satisfaction. This study attempted to explain how management style and interpersonal skills can affect job satisfaction. A total of 78 people completed a survey online and were recruited through their Introductory psychology class or Facebook. Participants were excluded if they did not work at least 20 hours a week and work/meet with their supervisor at least once a month. Micromanagement and transformational management were the management styles focused on in this study. Micromanagement had a moderate to strong, negative correlation to job satisfaction. Transformational leadership had a strong and positive correlation to job satisfaction. Interpersonal skills had a weak to moderate, positive correlation to job satisfaction. Interpersonal communication skills promote use of healthy coping mechanisms and transformational managers have a common ideology that their workers come before the objective of the organization. Both factors reflect the importance of building healthy relationships in order to feel more satisfied with your job.