Leadership behaviour and employee engagement: a Kuwaiti services company

This paper examines the impact of three types of leadership behaviour on work engagement within a Kuwaiti services company. Quantitative methodology, through a survey, was utilised to gather data from 231 participants. The results indicated a significant but small positive relationship between both transactional and transformational leadership behaviours and work engagement, and a significant negative relation between laissez-faire leadership behaviour and work engagement. These interesting results appear to reflect a transnational organisational culture, characterised by shorter-term employment and commitment by managers, whose leadership behaviours are conditioned by their relationship to the 'employer' culture and their rewards expectations.