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

Abstract

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 H1 and H2. To test H3, moderation test was run to find if Big Five personality traits moderate the relationship between leadership and work Stress. H3 was partially supported. H4 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 H5 was rejected.

Headnote

ABSTRACT

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 H1 and H2. To test H3, moderation test was run to find if Big Five personality traits moderate the relationship between leadership and work Stress. H3 was partially supported. H4 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 H5 was rejected.

Keywords: Leadership Paradigm, Work Stress, Stress Diagnostic Survey, Big Five Personality Dimensions, Mediators, and Moderators.

INTRODUCTION

As there is a propelling increase in the complexity in the work environment of organizations, job-related stress experienced by organizational members is constantly on the increase (Brockner, Grover, Reed, & Dewitt, 1992; Champy, 1995). Leadership and managerial scenario in every country are drastically changing and new challenges emerge as organizational leaders work with their protégé's. Leadership can be one of the most important and a critical task that guides organizations in the direction they strive for. What should be an appropriate leadership style and how does a particular leadership style affect workers' performance, while creating an environment of congeniality or stress has long been a question of debate in social sciences literature. Dhamodharan and Arumugasamy (2011), concluded that leadership styles and behaviors have a facilitating and influencing impact on workrelated stress.

Many scholars in organizational behavior (Argyle & Furnham, 2013; Bass, 1998; Bass & Avolio, 1990; Gary. A. Yukl, 1994) have encouraged researchers to dig deeper and explore the relationships between various leadership styles and their impacts on work-related stress so that senior executives can look at their leadership styles and determine if their leadership styles are facilitators or alleviators for their workers stress levels in organizations. A review of extensive research on leadership undergone over a century (Bass & Stogdill, 1990; Rost, 1993; Safi, Mohamadi, Amouzadeh, & Arshi, 2015; Gary A Yukl, 1989) reveals that it has been mainly concerned with looking at how leadership as an independent variable makes an impact on the workers' attitudinal and stress levels.

Though there are extensive research repositories on leadership styles, leadership development, stress, stressors, and personality dimensions, there seems to be a lack in studies to holistically understand the combined effect varying leadership styles and paradigms on workers' stress. Therefore, it seems but obvious that further investigations need to be carried out on how leadership style may impact the perceived job-related stress. Furthermore, an additional focus can be placed on the question, 'do various leadership styles are affected by the type of personalities a particular leader has' or 'does the personality dimension play any mediating or a moderating role between the relationship of leadership style and its impact on work stress'. The understanding of the concept of personality has never been universal (Contrada, Leventhal, & O'Leary, 1990; Csikszentmihalyi & Wong, 2014) and it is not clear how and why various personality traits impact the relationship of leadership styles on stress. This paper explores the abovementioned avenues at a detailed length.

The objective of this paper is to take a systemic view of the impact of Transformational, Transactional, and Laissez Fair leadership styles on workers' stress. Furthermore, this paper is focused on adding to our understanding to find out mediating or moderating effect of the Big Five personality dimensions on the relationship between the impact of leadership styles and workers stress. The aim is to see if there is a significant impact of overall leadership on work stress and if there is any difference in such an impact based on the different leadership styles. By using advanced techniques in quantitative analysis, real-time data is analyzed to find a statistically significant relationship between dependent variables of work stress and the independent variables of leadership styles. After reviewing the literature, research questions are developed and hypotheses are proposed. 364 companies of Pakistan representing 13 different public and private industrial sectors are included. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire developed by Avolio and Bass (2004) containing a validated form of 45 items and Stress Diagnostic Survey instrument developed by Ivancevich and Matteson (1980) were used to find out the impact of Transformational, Transactional and Laissez Fair style of leadership on levels of workers stress. The overall objective is to answer the research questions established and to test the hypotheses and conclude from this analysis if the hypotheses are accepted or rejected.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A leader can be labeled as an individual in an organization who sets targets for his subordinates and followers and motivates them to achieve these targets (Day, Fleenor, Atwater, Sturm, & McKee, 2014; Jam, Akhtar, Haq, & Rehman, 2010), so that organizational goals, objectives, and overall mission can be accomplished. Gary (1994) defines leadership as a social influence process where "leadership is a group phenomenon" and leadership is to elucidate an organization's objectives to the followers and in turn motivate them to achieve the stated and desired objectives. When dealing with subordinates, leaders should embody various combinations of skills in such a manner that at times they dictate their authorities and at other instances provide support and safety to followers (Haider, Asad, & Fatima, 2017). Many researchers propose that leadership and the subsequent leader's behavior should be both efficient and effectual. It is common knowledge that those leaders who give their followers a clear vision, shared common values, future planning, and who are team oriented are the most successful to lead their followers (Zaccaro, LaPort, & José, 2013).

Increased complexity and fast changes occurring in organizational work environment along with increased unstinted work demands have given an immense intensification to a higher level of work-related stress experienced by employees (Champy, 1995; Ganster & Rosen, 2013). Work stress is now considered as one of the crucial problems erupting in the workplace in many countries (LaBier, 2016; Siu, Lu, & Cooper, 1999). Ivancevich and Matteson (Oosthuizen & Lille, 2010) define stress as, "an adaptive response, mediated by individual differences and/or psychological processes, which is a consequence of any external action, situation, or event that places excessive psychological or physical demands on a person". According to Parker and DeCotiis (1983), work stress is defined as the undesirable or an uncomfortable feeling experienced by the employees at their workplace that is the outcome of the prevalent opportunities, demands, and constraints that are in direct relation to potentially important work-related outcomes. Robbins (2010) categorized sources of stressors as organizational, environmental, and individual factors. When exposed to any stressor, employees interject and engage in coping behaviors and mechanisms that help them to deal with the stressful situation (Lazarus, 1991; Pi, Chiu, & Lin, 2016). It is important to mention that stress has been explored in terms of having both a positive and a negative impact on employees' performance. However, the negative impact of stress is more deleterious than the positive ones. Therefore, work stress has largely been studied in terms of its negative impacts on the individuals' performance (Zhang, LePine, Buckman, & Wei, 2014). High job stress affects an individual's physical, mental, and behavioral aspects of life that can lead to high absenteeism, high job turnovers, and lesser interest in the tasks, hence reducing effectiveness and efficiency (Shah, & Asad, 2018). Erkutlu and Chafra (2006) suggested that those leaders who use their authority and power by giving instructions to followers without paying any attention to their ideas cause a negative effect on the organization adding up stress within the followers as well. Hence it can be deduced that the leadership behavior and leader style have a direct relation with high or low job stress. According to different estimates (Beehr & Newman, 1978; Jamal, 1990; Kram & Hall, 1989; Motowidlo, Packard, & Manning, 1986), the cost of job-related stress in America is somewhere to a tune of US$ 200-300 billion annually.

The Big Five Personality Dimensions

Literature repositories describe personality in terms of five common factors usually labeled as the Big Five (Digman, 1997; John, 1990; Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, & Barrick, 1999; McCrae, 1992; McCrae & Costa, 1984; Zweig & Webster, 2004). These factors include i) Extraversion versus Introversion, ii) Agreeableness versus Hostility, iii) Conscientiousness versus Lack of Conscientiousness, iv) Emotional Stability versus Neuroticism, and v) Openness to Experience versus Closed-ness to Experience.

Extraversion can be characterized as a tendency to be dominant, excitement seeking, self-confident, and active (Costa & McCrae, 1992; Van den Berg et al., 2014; Wihler, Meurs, Wiesmann, Troll, & Blickle, 2017). Agreeableness relates to people displaying a capability of unselfishness, altruism and caring. Conscientiousness can be associated with how people can cope extremely well with problem-solving (Roberts, Lejuez, Krueger, Richards, & Hill, 2014; Watson & Hubbard, 1996), as these individuals have a higher persistency characteristic to specifically deal with problem-solving. Neuroticism can be explained as having distressing emotions along with a tendency to experience things negatively such as having traits of irritability, low self-esteem, poor inhibition of impulses, fearfulness, and helplessness (Costa & McCrae, 1987; Samartzis et al., 2014). Openness to experience relates to intelligence and curiosity that can be characterized with a tendency of trying to learn something of value from taxing and propelling experiences in terms of personal growth and positive outcomes in life (Goldberg, 1993; John, 1990; Wu & Hu, 2013).

Leadership Style, Workers' Stress, and Personality

The type of relationship, which the employees of a firm have with their immediate supervisor is considered to be both unique and extremely significant (Fiedler, Bell, Chemers, & Patrick, 1984). It is prudent to understand the relationship between leadership style and the appraisal of subordinate workplace stress. We can determine which leadership styles can be most suitably developed and delivered so that it encourages the subordinates to appraise the so-called stressful workplace situations in a positive and constructive manner as De Nobile and McCormick (2008) argued that leadership style is associated with different stress reactions at all levels. Erkutlu (2008), found that Transformational leadership style highly stimulates the commitment of workers with their organizations leading to higher job satisfaction and reduced stress in the hospitality industry.

Many researchers have tried to explore the relationship and impact of personality dimensions on the leadership paradigm (Asad, Haider, & Fatima, 2018). According to Bono and Judge (2004), their recent PsycINFO search showed that 12% of the 15,000 articles that were published since 1990 on different topics of leadership had a personality included in their keywords. Similarly, Judge, Bono, Ilies, and Gerhardt (2002) in their empirical study found that the Big Five factor model of personality traits had a multiple-correlation of 0.48 with leadership, hence depicting a strong support that various types of leadership styles are affected by the personality traits of the leader in question.

Based on the literature reviewed on leadership styles and their impact on stress whilst considering the role of Big-Five personality dimensions the following five research questions have been established for the purpose of this study:

RQ1: Is there any relationship between perceived leadership style and employees' work stress?

RQ2: Do differing leadership styles (Transformational, Transactional & Laissez Fair) have a differing impact on employees work stress?

RQ3: Do different personality traits moderate the relationship between perceived leadership styles and employees work stress?

RQ4:Do different personality traits mediate the relationship between perceived leadership styles and employees work stress?

Based on the above research questions the following hypotheses are proposed:

Hi: There is a significant relationship between different leadership styles and work stress experienced by subordinates

H2: Different leadership styles significantly differ in terms of their impact on work stress experienced by subordinates

Нз: Different personality traits significantly moderate the relationship between perceived leadership styles and employees work stress

H4: Different personality traits significantly mediate the relationship between perceived leadership styles and employees work stress

METHODOLOGY

The research paradigm follows the positivist approach. The logic and reason for using the positivist approach are related to the fact that knowledge should be developed objectively by studying the causal relationships between observable phenomena's (Bryman, 2008). The research strategy adopted is quantitative method and survey method to collect data is based on deductive reasoning. For this purpose, literature was reviewed, research questions were established, and hypotheses were proposed. Data was collected from private and public sector organizations. Primary population of interest constituted business organizations listed in the stock exchange and Lahore Chamber of Commerce. The sampling frame constituted of firms belonging to both the manufacturing and service sector organizations.

Research Design

The research design comprises of a cross-section survey of the population of interest by using the MLQ questionnaire and SDS diagnostic survey, which was sent to 400 managers of 34 different organizations who represented 13 different industries. The responses were generated in one go at a single point in time from the sample organizations using self-administered questionnaires. Out of the 400 questionnaires administered, results from 364 questionnaires were accepted and entered for final analysis.

RESULTS AND FINDINGS

Internal Consistency and Validity of Instruments

To check the internal validity and consistency of the MLQ questionnaire instrument administered, Cronbach Alpha was run collectively, which generated the following overall result:

The Reliability score achieved is 0.890. For a good reliability score of 0.6 (Hair, Tatham, & Black, 1995) and above is considered acceptable and thus the appropriateness of data for further analyses is justified. As we can see from above that the scores for each variable of Cronbach Alpha are higher than 0.645 therefore, the data is considered internally consistent and reliable (Hair et al., 1995) for further analysis. Work stress was identified by using the SDS instrument developed by Ivancevich and Matteson (1980) containing 30 questions. Again to check the internal validity and consistency of stress instrument administered, Cronbach Alpha was run collectively, which generated the following results:

Cronbach Alpha was also computed for the six individual dimensions of work stress for SDS instrument individually and the following results were generated:

RQ 1: Is there a significant relationship between perceived leadership style and employees' work stress?

To answer the first research question, Pearson Correlation analysis was performed with the following results:

Three leadership styles were analyzed to find if there is an impact of these on stress. Table 3 shows that all three leadership styles have a significant effect on work stress. Transactional leadership style is positively significant 2-tailed P = 0.002 with work stress, Transactional leadership style is positively significant 2-tailed P = 0.081 with work stress, and Laissez Fair leadership style is positively significant 2-tailed P = 0.000 with works stress. This means all the leadership styles have a significant relationship with work stress hence our first hypothesis that is, there is a significant relationship between perceived leadership styles and employees' work stress is supported.

RQ2: Do differing leadership styles (Transformational, Transactional & Laissez Fair) have a significant differencing impact on employees' work stress? For the second research question work stress was taken as a dependent variable while leadership styles were taken as independent variables. The following results were generated:

Model summary and ANOVA Table 4 above give us the value of R Square that is 0.149 for the overall model and has significance P-value = 0.000 therefore, the model is overall significant. By looking at the coefficients values individually the following results were generated:_

The Overall model is significant. Different leadership styles have a different impact on work stress. Laissez Fair style of leadership is positively significant with work stress with the highest beta value of 0.309, Transactional leadership style is positively significant with work stress having the second highest beta value of 0.142. Transformational leadership is significant but negatively with work stress with a beta value of -0.109. Laissez Fair style is the most significant with overall stress therefore, different leadership styles differ in terms of their impact on work stress experienced by subordinates is accepted and H2 is supported.

RQ3: Do different personality traits significantly moderate the relationship between perceived leadership styles and employees work stress?

For the third research question the Big Five personality dimensions of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness were tested to see if they significantly moderate the relationship between leadership and work stress in employees. A test on moderation was run using SPSS with the following results deduced:

Results and Interpretation for Moderators

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of combined interaction of Transformational leadership style and Extroversion on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Transformational leadership style changes from 0.742 to combined interaction of Transformational leadership style and Extroversion to .844. Therefore, it can be concluded that an Extrovert personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Transformational Leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of combined interaction of Transformational leadership style and Agreeableness on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Transformational leadership style changes from .025 to the combined interaction of Transformational leadership style and Agreeableness to .142. Therefore, it can be concluded that an Agreeable personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Transformational Leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of combined interaction of Transformational leadership style and Conscientiousness on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Transformational leadership style changes from 0.544 to the combined interaction of Transformational leadership style and Conscientiousness to 0.656.

Therefore, it can be concluded that a Conscientious personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Transformational Leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact Beta Value of combined interaction of Transformational leadership style and Neuroticism on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Transformational leadership style changes from 0.495 to the combined interaction of Transformational leadership style and Neuroticism to 0.419. Therefore, it can be concluded that a Neurotic personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Transformational leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of the combined interaction of Transformational leadership style and Openness on Work Stress is not significant as P-Value > 0.050. Therefore, it can be concluded that an Open personality trait does not moderate the relationship between the perceived Transformational Leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of combined interaction of Transactional leadership style and Extroversion on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Transactional leadership style changes from 0.673 to combined interaction of Transactional leadership style and Extroversion to 0.529. Therefore, it can be concluded that an Extrovert personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Transactional leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of combined interaction of Transactional leadership style and Agreeableness on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Transactional leadership style changes from 0.185 to combined interaction of Transactional leadership style and Agreeableness to 0.068. Therefore, it can be concluded that an Agreeable personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Transactional leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of combined interaction of Transactional leadership style and Conscientiousness on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Transactional leadership style changes from 0.960 to combined interaction of Transactional leadership style and Conscientiousness to 0.830. Therefore, it can be concluded that a Conscientious personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Transactional leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of combined interaction of Transactional leadership style and Neuroticism on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Transactional leadership style changes from 0.556 to combined interaction of Transactional leadership style and Neuroticism to .761. Therefore, it can be concluded that a Neurotic personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Transactional leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of combined interaction of Transactional leadership style and Openness on Work Stress is not significant as P-Value > 0.050. Therefore, it can be concluded that an Open personality trait does not moderate the relationship between the perceived Transactional leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of the combined interaction of Laissez Fair leadership style and Extroversion on Work Stress is not significant as P-Value > 0.050. Therefore, it can be concluded that an Extrovert personality trait does not moderate the relationship between the perceived Laissez-faire leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of the combined interaction of Laissez Fair leadership style and Agreeableness on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Laissez-Fair leadership style changes from 0.767 to the combined interaction of Laissez-faire leadership style and Agreeableness to 0.448. Therefore, it can be concluded that an Agreeable personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Laissez Fair leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of the combined interaction of Laissez-faire leadership style and Conscientiousness on Work Stress is significant where P value is <0.050. The ß value of Laissez-faire leadership style changes from 0.638 to the combined interaction of Laissez-faire leadership style and Conscientiousness to 0.299. Therefore, it can be concluded that a Conscientious personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Laissez-faire leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of the combined interaction of Laissez-faire leadership style and Neuroticism on Work Stress is significant where P value is < 0.050. The ß value of Laissez-faire leadership style changes from 0.013 to the combined interaction of Laissez-faire leadership style and Neuroticism to 0.421. Therefore, it can be concluded that a Neurotic personality trait does moderate the relationship between the perceived Laissez-faire leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees.

According to the findings given above, the impact beta value of the combined interaction of Laissez Fair leadership style and Openness on Work Stress is not significant as P-Value > 0.050. Therefore, it can be concluded that an Open personality trait does not moderate the relationship between the perceived Laissez-faire leadership style and work stress experienced by the employees. Based on the above analysis, we see that Personality traits moderate the relationships between leadership styles and work stress experienced by employees in 11 out of a total of 15 interactions, whereas these personality traits do not moderate relationships between leadership styles and work stress experienced by employees in 4 out of a total of 15 interactions. Hence we can conclude that different personality traits significantly moderate the relationship between perceived leadership styles and employees work stress and hypothesis H3 is partially supported.

RQ4: Do different personality traits significantly mediate the relationship between perceived leadership styles and employees work stress?

For the fourth research question, the Big Five personality dimensions of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness were proposed as mediators and were tested to see if they have a mediating relationship between leadership and work stress in employees. A test on mediation was run using the Preacher and Hayes (2004) process macro that uses bootstrapping to estimate the confidence intervals for the indirect effect.

Using the above-mentioned procedures, results were generated, which are summarized in summary Table 21 below:

The summary Table 21 shows that results of mediation test. According to the procedures devised by Preacher and Hayes (2004), the process macro develops a confidence interval for the indirect effect between the dependent and independent variables if the confidence interval does not contain a zero value. This means that the indirect effect of mediation is significant. In the test conducted using Big Five personality traits as mediators, it was found that there was no mediation effect of personality traits on the relationship between Transformational and Transactional leadership styles on work stress. In Laissez Fair style of leadership only Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism mediated the relationship between leadership style and work stress where zero did not occur between the LL95% and the UL95% having 95% indirect effect values ranges from .3692 - 1.0226 for agreeableness, value range from .1341 -0.7116 for conscientiousness and value range from .1004 -0.5167 for neuroticism, while openness did not mediate the relationship. Hence we can conclude that different personality traits do not significantly mediate the relationship between perceived leadership styles and employees work stress and hence the related hypothesis is rejected.

CONCLUSION

Based on the above survey and analysis of the results, it is seen that Transactional leadership style is positively significant P = 0.002 with work stress, Transactional leadership style was positively significant P = 0.081 with work stress and Laissez Fair leadership style was also positively significant P = 0.000 with works stress. We can thus conclude that leadership styles do affect the level of workers ' stress. Stress can be both positive and negative in nature. Leaders in certain instances have to show authority and power towards their followers, and at other times have to play the role of a facilitator to reduce the levels of stress. Hence it is important for a leader to adopt a certain type of leadership style while dealing with followers. This means that under leadership the various Transformational, Transactional & Laissez Fair styles can have a varying effect on stress levels. Results of this research support this argument as R Square is 0.149 for the overall model and has significant P-value = 0.000. Laissez Fair style of leadership is positively significant with work stress with the highest beta value of 0.309.

Transactional leadership style is positively significant with work stress having the second highest beta value of 0.142, Transformational leadership is significant but negatively with work stress with a beta value of -0.109. Laissez Fair style is the most significant with overall stress. As two additional hypotheses were proposed bringing in the role of Big Five personality dimension as Moderators and mediators, it was seen that out of the total 15 interactions run between leadership styles and personality dimension, 11 Personality traits moderated the relationships between leadership styles and work stress experienced by employees having significant ß values, whereas 4 out of 15 interactions of personality traits did not moderate relationships between leadership styles and work stress due to insignificant ß values. Hence it was partially accreted that personality traits do moderate the relationship between leadership styles and stress.

To see if Personality acted as a mediator between the relationship of leadership styles and works stress, process macro was run to develop a confidence interval for the indirect effect between the dependent and independent variable. Bootstrapping was used. The results showed that there was no mediation effect of personality traits on the relationship between Transformational and Transactional leadership styles on work stress whereas only three variables on Laissez Fair leadership style showed the significant relationship as zero did not occur between the LL95% and the UL95%. Based on these results it was concluded that personality traits do not mediate the relationship between leadership styles and workers' stress.

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