INVESTIGATING THE ADOPTION OF STRATEGIC, TRANSFORMATIONAL AND TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP STYLES BY PROJECT MANAGERS ON CONSTRUCTION SITES WITHIN KADUNA

To nurture innovation and sustainability, leadership styles should come up with tools and techniques that would not only be effective but ensure improvement and handling changes that will steer organizations towards innovation and creativity thereby enabling the transformation agenda to succeed. This paper aimed at identifying three leadership styles (transactional, strategic and transformational leadership styles) adopted within the business environment that can bring about a change in the construction environment. It assessed their frequency of adoption, and effectiveness of the techniques used by each style as viewed by multi-disciplinary project managers managing construction sites. A structured questionnaire was administered in a survey manner to project managers selected using snowballing technique working on construction sites located within Kaduna. 278 were administered and 205 were returned amounting to 74% response rate. Analysis conducted on a Likert Scale using descriptive statistics (mean) showed that the most frequently adopted style is transformational leadership style with a mean of 4.10 while the most effective was transactional leadership style with a mean of 4.37. The most often adopted as well as most effective technique is active monitoring of subordinates to anticipate issues and take corrective action in response to problems. The study recommends that these styles should be adopted more often in the future