INTRODUCTION
The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between transformational and transactional leadership styles on employee engagement in Public Service Department, Putrajaya. The study is intended to examine the predictive ability of both leadership styles on engagement, hypothesizing that both styles will positively predict aspects on engagement. However, transformational leadership, the more effectively style, will have greater predictive strength compared to transactional leadership.
METHOD
The data were collected through questionnaires sent to the administrative unit at seven (7) divisions in PSD to be distributed to the junior officers (salary grade 41 and 44) at Kompleks C, Putrajaya. 153 respondents were involved in this study. The questionnaires were selected from studies conducted by Multifactor Leadership Questionnaires (MLQ) developed by Bass (1985) and Utretcht Work Engagement Scale (UWES: Shoufeli et al, 2002) with some adjustment to suit the objectives of this study. It will measure subordinate’s perception of leadership style of their supervisors and evaluating subordinate’s employee engagement.
ANALYSIS
The standard SPSS (version 19.0) was used to analyze the data. This study used both descriptive and inferential statistics for data analysis. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze the respondents’ profile while inferential statistics was used to test the hypotheses formulated for the study. Pearson Correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationship between the independent variables and the dependant variable. The hierarchical regressions was performed to determine whether gender moderates leadership styles and employee engagement
RESULTS
The findings showed that there are statistically significant positive relationships between transformational and transactional leadership on employee engagement. However, transactional leadership was at a lesser degree compared to transformational leadership The correlation analysis showed that all the independent variables have moderate relationship with the dependent variable. The results also indicate that the gender moderate the employee engagement.
CONCLUSION
From this study, it can be concluded that transformational and transactional leadership styles predict employee engagement in public sector, with transformational leadership has a higher degree of relationship with employee engagement compared to transactional leadership. Therefore, in order for the public sector to stay relevant, the need for transformational leadership is very important to increase organizational performance.