Leadership styles and their impact on workplace engagement: Insights from emerging enterprises

Leadership style significantly shapes employee behavior and organizational outcomes, especially within dynamic and resource-constrained environments such as startups. This study investigates the influence of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among employees in Philippine startup companies. Drawing on transformational leadership theory and social exchange theory, the study addresses the gap in contextualized research on leadership’s impact in emerging startup ecosystems (Arokiasamy, 2016). A quantitative research design was employed using structured survey questionnaires distributed to employees across various startup sectors. Statistical analysis revealed that transformational leadership is positively associated with higher levels of OCB, while laissez-faire leadership tends to correspond with decreased team cohesion and satisfaction. Transactional leadership showed mixed outcomes depending on the dimension of OCB. The study concludes that emotionally intelligent and empowering leadership practices foster employee engagement and extra-role behaviors crucial to startup success. These findings provide valuable insights for startup founders and human resources (HR) practitioners seeking to build resilient and high-performing teams. This paper contributes to the literature by contextualizing leadership-OCB dynamics within the Philippine startup environment.