The moderating effects of employees' characteristics on the relationship between leadership styles and employees' job performance in Libyan oil organizations

he main purpose of this study was to investigate the moderating effects of employees' characteristics (agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and self-efficacy) on the relationships between leadership style and employees' job performance. Inconsistent findings in contemporary literature on the relationships between leadership style and employees' performance further motivate this study. Due to these inconsistencies, a new research stream emerged which suggests the
investigation of the effect of a third variable that may better explain the nature of these links. Many theories have emphasized the necessity to investigate the role that employees' characteristics play on the leader-employee relationship. This study integrated four theories such as the path-goal theory, leader-member exchange theory, social exchange theory and cognitive theory. A total of 35 leaders and 252 employees from national oil organizations in Libya participated in the study. The findings of this study revealed that transformational and transactional leadership
styles were significant predictors of employees' job performance except organizational citizenship behaviours towards individuals
(OCB-I). This study, however, supported the premises of the path-goal theory and the leader-member exchange theory, and it confirms the importance of employees' characteristics as a
moderator on the relationship between leadership style and some dimensions of employees' job performance, i.e. innovative citizenship behaviours, organizational citizenship behaviours towards organizations, and task performance. While the effect of employees' openness to experience on the relationship between transformational style and innovative citizenship behaviours was positively significant, the impact of conscientiousness and self-efficacy on the relationship between transactional leadership and OCB-O, and between transformational leaders and task performance
were negatively significant. These findings, therefore, strongly suggest the importance of employees’ characteristics in the selection process and it also supports the importance of employees' characteristics in the relationship between leaders and their employees.