Abstract
The increasing demand for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and contemporaneous shortage of personnel increases the salience of employee performance. Evidence strongly suggests a correlation between leadership style and employee performance. This quantitative study seeks a greater understanding of the relationship between supervisor leadership style and its impact on employee performance in EMS with the hypothesis suggesting a positive relationship between constructive styles and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and a positive correlation between destructive leadership styles and workplace deviant behaviors (WDB). Additionally, the study sought to identify if an association exists between out-group, gender and minorities, and their perception of the presence of destructive leadership as compared to in-group employees. Data was gathered on the predictor variable: leadership styles, specifically, constructive vs. destructive and its impact on the outcome variable: employee performance measured through the presence of OCB and WDB. Control variables include gender, age, job tenure, and weekly hours worked. Seven agencies allowed their employees to take part through a web-based survey that combined the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ 5X), Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ), Abuse Supervisor Survey, OCB and WDB Surveys. Descriptive statistics and linear regressions were performed to identify relationships. Although the study did not find a correlation between leadership style and performance, several causes are considered. Gender did partially predict an affiliation based on out-group membership. Proposals for cultivating constructive styles and managing out-group tendency towards an increase in destructive leadership perception are presented.
Keywords: leadership styles, employee performance, constructive leadership, destructive leadership, workplace deviant behavior, organizational citizenship behaviors