The effect of commanders' leadership style on employees' organizational voice (Study case: Bushehr police command)

Police commanders have difficult duties to manage police affairs. Meanwhile, their leadership style can have a great impact on some characteristics of police officers. The current research is descriptive in terms of its practical purpose and correlational in nature, and survey in terms of implementation method.

The statistical population of this research was 2,200 employees of Bushehr police command; the sample size was considered to be 328 according to Cochran's formula. The data collection tool was the standard questionnaire of leadership style according to Hersey and Blanchard employees (1989) and the standard organizational voice questionnaire of Hames employees (2012). The total reliability value of leadership style questionnaires and staff voice were calculated as 0.910 and 0.856, respectively, which indicated a high level of instrument reliability. Also, for data analysis, structural equation modeling was used with the help of SmartPLS software.

The results showed that the leadership style with a coefficient of 0.460 is effective on the organizational voice of the employees. Dominant leadership style with an impact factor of 0.224 has a negative impact, and persuasive, participatory and delegating leadership styles have a positive and significant impact on the voice of employees. Also, another result indicates that there is a significant difference between the voice of employees in various leadership styles, so that the most voice of employees is assigned to employees with commanders with delegation style.

The result of the research findings is that the police commanders of Bushehr province should prioritize the delegative leadership style in order to increase the voice of the employees with this style.