Management of a multicultural workforce in Greek organizations

Abstract

The identification of the leadership styles that are applied by Greek organizations which encompass diverse multicultural employees in their workforce and the impact they may have on business performance and employee satisfaction, as well as the identification of the ideal leadership style for them, were the two main goals of this dissertation. The term “diversity” includes people from different cultural and educational backgrounds, those who follow different religions or those who come from another country, disabled people, young or old workforce or even women in top management. In this essay 5 leadership styles are discussed: ethical, paternalistic, transformational, democratic and entrepreneurial. Two more factors are presented in fully detail: business performance and employee satisfaction. Literature review illustrated the relationships between these leadership styles and business performance and job satisfaction respectively. Furthermore, a primary quantitative research was conducted. 136 questionnaires were selected and analyzed in order to answer the main aims of this dissertation and to reach to a conclusion. Research results showed the positive effect of all leadership styles on business performance and employee satisfaction. The beneficial effects of ethical, transformational, democratic and entrepreneurial leadership styles on these two business elements were in compliance with the already existent literature. However, some disagreement related to patriarchal leadership style seemed to be indicated. In literature paternalistic leadership seems to have a negative correlation with both business performance and employee satisfaction. Yet, the research indicated its positive effects on these variables. In addition, the positive correlation of job satisfaction with business performance is presented in the Thesis. Moreover, research showed that the optimal business results can be occurred with the combination of these 5 leadership styles, especially with the cooperation of ethical, transformational,l and entrepreneurial leadership that presents the best results and come in full agreement with literature.