The Impact of Autocratic Leadership Style on Counterproductive Work Behavior: The Mediating role of Employee Commitment and Moderating role of Emotional Exhaustion

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to gain an insight about the effect of Autocratic Leadership Style on dependent variable Counterproductive work behavior of employees in the Banking Sector. Data has been collected from banking officers of different Commercial Banks and the data contains 282 respondents. Quantitative research method has been used and the questionnaire has 49-items including 5 items of demographical details of respondents. Counterproductive Work Behavior arises when the leadership style is Autocratic. Autocratic Leadership Style decreases the Employee Commitment which results in the Counterproductive Work Behavior of employees. Emotional Exhaustion plays its role as a moderator as it strengthens the negative relationship between EC and CWB. Emotional Exhaustion in relation to CWB and Employee Commitment has not been studied before and our findings imply that it has a significant impact on the behavior of employees. The focus of this research is on the Banking Sector in Pakistan and the derived relations in this research could not be applied in other different sectors as perception of employees is different in every sector. The practical implications of this research are that the managers can change their leadership styles and decrease the counterproductive work behavior of the employees.