Preferred leadership styles in facilitating changes effected by a change in a regulation in a South African investment bank.

Abstract

A specific change initiative South African investment bank is studied. The change was prompted by an industry wide change in banking regulation. The regulatory change precluded and made it expensive for banks to engage in proprietary trading practices and as a result, some previously profitable business lines were made unviable. The change within the investment bank was a merger of its Equities and Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities divisions. This merger led to changes in both employee roles and their location within the bank. Goleman’s emotional intelligence based leadership styles framework is used to define the leadership styles which were presented to respondents through an online survey to indicate preferences. The research concluded that the three resonant leadership styles, which are, the visionary, coaching and democratic styles were most preferred by change recipients. The study found that there was no overwhelming preference for the affiliative style and it was recommended that it be used as support for the other resonant styles. The dissonant leadership styles, i.e., the commanding and pacesetting styles, were not preferred by the change recipients. Preference scores were found to be consistent across gender and employee rank within the organization.