Impact of Perceived Leadership Style on Employees' Work Stress: Moderating and Mediating Role Big 5 Personality Traits

This research paper identifies the impact of leadership styles on organizational workers' stress. The aim is to determine if there is a significant impact of overall leadership on work stress and if there is any difference in such an impact based on different leadership styles. It further proposes that the Big Five personality dimensions can play the role of either mediators or moderators between these relationships. After reviewing the literature, four research questions were developed and four hypotheses were proposed in the study. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and Stress Diagnostic Survey instrument were used to find out the relationship between leadership styles and their impact on employees' stress. Positivist research paradigm was followed using the survey method and the study is explanatory. The dependent variable is work stress, while the independent variable is leadership style. The research design comprises of a cross-section survey of the population with a total sample size of 364 managers belonging to 34 organizations operating in Pakistan. Cronbach's Alpha was calculated to determine the internal reliability of the questionnaires. Pearson Correlation method was initially used to see the impacts of various leadership styles on organizational stress. The direct effect of leadership was ascertained by the results, thus, completely supporting [H.sub.1] and [H.sub.2]. To test [H.sub.3], moderation test was run to find if Big Five personality traits moderate the relationship between leadership and work Stress. [H.sub.3] was partially supported. [H.sub.4] was developed to check if personality played a mediating role between leadership style and stress. The bootstrap method was used to test this hypothesis and findings show insignificant mediation, hence [H.sub.5] was rejected.