Leadership: style, satisfaction and commitment: An exploration in the United Arab Emirates' construction sector

Purpose - This paper aims to provide an examination of the extent to which different leadership styles impact employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through a case analysis in the construction sector. Design/methodology/approach - The research is based on a survey of three companies, one client organization, one consultancy firm and one contracting company. The useable survey comprised 251 individual responses from 600 distributed, giving a response rate of 41.83 percent. Findings - The findings show that consultative and consensus leadership styles are prevalent in the construction sector in the UAE. Further, it was found that an employee's job satisfaction is strongly affected by leadership, with more than 50 percent of survey respondents stating that leadership strongly influences their job satisfaction. Leadership style was found to moderately to strongly affect organizational commitment of employees in the industry in the UAE. Practical implications - The survey provides a useful instrument by which organizations across other sectors and within different cultural contexts can evaluate the significance of leadership style, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Originality/value - The work is unique in that it is an examination of the impact of organizational leadership style within a contemporary regional context. A number of studies have been carried out in the Arab world that suggest that leadership in Arab culture nurtures consultative and participative tendencies. These are all outdated by more than a decade and no recent study in the Arabian Gulf region exists and none which explore leadership styles' impact on employees.