Relationship between Perception on Leadership Styles in Workplace and Occupational Stress among Employee

Occupational stress occurs when the job requirement such as leadership style do not meet the capabilities and needs of the worker. It has great impact affecting both employee and organization. Study objective was to determine the prevalence between leadership style and occupational stress among employee and its relationship. Cross-sectional study was carried out through online social media, targetting working adults. Snowballing sampling was employed in which research participants recruited other participants from among their acquaintance. This online survey adopted two Malay-translated and validated survey forms of Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and Job Stress Level inventory. There were 447 respondents with median age of 31.0 +/- 8.0 years old. Majority were, female (57.27%), Malay (91.28%), married (66.44%) with high education qualification (86.80%). Majority worked in Selangor and Wilayah Persekutuan (53.47%) and attached to government agencies (59.06%). Data indicates that perceived transformational and transactional leadership styles practiced by leaders at their workplace were at moderate level with both account for 51.2% and 81.7% respectively. Respondent revealed stress level at average level of 44.3%. There was significant relationship with weak negative correlation between transformational leadership and occupational stress (r = -0.182, p<0.05). As for transactional leadership, the relationship was significant with a moderate negatively correlated occupational stress (r= -0.554, p<0.05). Transactional leadership style showed moderate inverse relationshipwith occupational stress as compared to transformational leadership style which had very weak inverse relationship. There was significant correlation between leadership style and occupational stress.