Leadership behaviours and the motivation and engagement of employees in organizational change

: the case of Nielsen IQ Portugal

Abstract

Nowadays, most organizations are subjected to change that occurs too constantly and too abruptly, as well as slow growth. The leadership boards meanwhile invest a lot of effort to ensure that they’re communicating effectively to help the company go forward in terms of potential and progress. In the context of organizations and employees’ engagement and motivation, it can be stated that leaders within businesses are required to continuously enhance their leadership behaviour, consequently contributing to a higher organizational success. Employees go through so much change and disruption, that many leaders wonder if they have the drive to contribute to moving the organization ahead. The core rationale behind undertaking this research is to identify the overall impact that leadershipbehaviours in times of organizational change have on aspects such as internal communication, employee motivation and their levels of engagement. Thus, a quantitative and qualitative analysis was conducted by the researcher, with an online survey distributed to the employees of Nielsen IQ Portugal that gathered 102 respondents, and with a careful selection of 4 leaders within the same organization to perform structured interviews. This way it was possible to better understand the level of engagement of current employees, their true view on their leader’s management and howthey accomplished the change process. Our research suggests that, not only leadership isviewed as a key factor for increasing levels of engagement and for a success ful implementation of change, but also that it has a general positive impact.

Date of Award	21 Feb 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Fernando Ilharco (Supervisor)