Link Between Culture, Leadership and Organisational Performance

Int. J. of Human Resource Management 11:4 August 2000 766–788

Leadership style, organizational culture and performance: empirical evidence from UK companies

Emmanuel Ogbonna and Lloyd C. Harris

Abstract The topics of leadership and organizational culture have attracted considerable interest from both academics and practitioners. Much of the interest in the two areas is based on explicit and implicit claims that both leadership and culture are linked to organizational performance. However, while the links between leadership and performance and between culture and performance have been examined independently, few studies have investigated the association between the three concepts. This paper examines the nature of this relationship and presents empirical evidence which suggests that the relationship between leadership style and performance is mediated by the form of organizational culture that is present. The paper concludes with a number of implications for theory and practice. Keywords Organizational culture; leadership style; performance; United Kingdom.

Introduction An examination of the literature in the elds of organizational culture and leadership nds that the two areas have been independently linked to organizational performance. For example, researchers have examined the links between leadership styles and performance (see Bycio et al., 1995; Howell and Avolio, 1993), and also between organizational culture and performance (see Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Denison, 1990; Ouchi, 1981; Pascale and Athos, 1981; Peters and Waterman, 1982; Kotter and Heskett, 1992). Furthermore, numerous aspects of the organizational culture literature allude to the role of leaders in ‘creating’ and ‘maintaining’ particular types of culture (for example, Schein, 1992; Siehl, 1985). Equally, the literature on leadership suggests that the ability to understand and work within a culture is a prerequisite to leadership effectiveness (see Hennessey, 1998). However, despite the...