The Role of Leadership for Shaping Organizational Culture and Building Employee Engagement in the Bulgarian Gaming Industry

Abstract

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the impact of leadership styles on organizational culture and employee engagement, and gain understanding of how these conceptual variables influence organizational performance. Through in-depth interviews, the participants from three Bulgarian gaming enterprises revealed their perceptions of how their previous and current casino managers were able to form organizational culture and build employee engagement. The study revealed that the change of leadership led to significant changes in organizational culture and the level of employee engagement. The results showed that the visionary style creates the highest level of engagement while commanding and pacesetting styles create the lowest. The affiliative style revealed rather controversial influence; after a visionary leader, it had a negative impact on engagement, but after a commanding style, it had a positive effect. During the research, a flaw in the Goleman's leadership model was found. Therefore, in the last part of the paper, a new 3-D Leadership-Style Model (3-D LSM) for determining the predominant leadership style is proposed. It is a more structured model, based on the combination of a few existing theories of leadership, improved with two new leadership sub-styles.

Keywords: leadership, organizational culture, employee engagement, chaos and complexity, Emotional Intelligence, Bulgaria