Influence of leadership styles on the academic staff retention in private universities in Ashanti Region

Abstract

Leadership is the process of providing a direction, and influencing individual or groups to achieve set goals of the group , and it is a key ingredient for an organization to achieve its set goals. A leader is a person who has power to influence individuals or group of people towards the achievement of these set goals. The main objective of this study was to establish the influence of leadership style on academic stuff retention in some private universities in Ashanti region of Ghana. The study also sought to ascertain the kind of leadership styles practice of managers of these institutions, and also sought to make recommendations in the areas of leadership practice for the improvement of academic staff retention. Descriptive survey was employed for this study. A convenience sampling method was used since every academic staff constitute part of the population of the study. A total of 77 respondents participated in the study. The study was quantitative and therefore relied on self-administered questionnaires to obtain data from the respondents. The data was analyzed using inferential statistical tool. The major findings of the study indicated that, leadership styles had no influence on academic staff retention in these universities, the study also revealed that, authoritative leadership style was the dominant practice, though democratic leadership style was most preferred. The study further showed that improvement in working conditions, remunerations, effective participative decision making and work relationship are imperative for academic staff retention. Finally, the study recommended the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, in addition to multiple variables for future studies.