CULTURAL INFLUENCE ON LEADERSHIP PRACTICE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FIRST BANK AND STERLING BANK

Founders and subsequent leaders in organizations created corporate culture, but overtime little is known about how the created corporate culture influences managers’ choice of a given leadership style. Therefore, this study examined the influence corporate culture has on the choice of managerial leadership styles. Charles Handy’s organizational culture questionnaire and Rensis Linkert’s leadership style questionnaire were merged to form a single questionnaire that was administered to 180 staff of First Bank plc and Sterling Bank plc within the Jos Business Unit. 163 questionnaires were retrieved and analysed using SPSS version 19.0. Simple Linear Regression was used in testing the four hypotheses and the results showed that there is no significant relationship between: power culture and the choice of exploitative-authoritative; role culture and the choice of benevolent-authoritative; task culture and the choice of consultative leadership style; person culture and participative leadership style in Nigerian banks. The study concludes that there is insignificant relationship between corporate culture and the choice of managerial leadership style in Plateau State. Hence, the study recommended that corporate managers should not choose leadership styles based on their corporate cultures