The effect of leadership styles on happiness at work among gen Z employees

Cultivating and sustaining happiness at work is important as it entails several positive outcomes such as maintaining positive mental health, reducing work stress, decreasing turnover intentions, promoting innovative behaviors, and organizational loyalty. This becomes more important when involving Gen Z employees. Many believed that leadership plays a crucial role in shaping employees’ experience of work. Leaders are said have the direct impact on the employees’ well-being and happiness However, not all leadership styles contribute positively to happiness at work. Therefore, this study is conducted with the intention to capture which leadership style might influence happiness at work among Gen Z employees. The study tested four independent variables namely, leader-member exchange, ethical leadership, transactional leadership and narcissistic leadership against happiness at work. A total of 148 questionnaire were distributed online using Microsoft form with response rate of 100%. In this study, hypotheses for direct relationship were tested using multiple regression analyses. Results showed that only ethical leadership was significantly positively related to happiness at work, while, narcissistic leadership was significantly negatively related to happiness at work. The findings indicate that employees will feel happy working in the organization if the leader has high ethical values and not being narcissist. These empirical findings provide new insight on the issues of employees happiness at work and its’ relation with different leadership style. Interestingly, transactional leadership and leader-member exchange did not contribue to employees’ happiness at work. The question of why both leadership style did not influence employees’ happiness at work provide opportunity for future research to reconcile these explanations.