Empathic Leadership And Employee's Commitment In Small And Medium Scale Enterprises In Port Harcourt City Local Government Area, Rivers State

The research project empathic leadership and employee's commitment in small and medium scale enterprises in port harcourt city local government area, rivers state. The objective of this study aimed at examining how leadership improve the profits in the small and medium scale enterprises in Port Harcourt City Local Government Area, Rivers State, investigating employee’s commitment to the leadership in the small and medium scale enterprises in Port Harcourt City Local Government Area, Rivers State and examining the barriers to the leadership and employee’s commitment in small and medium scale enterprises in Port Harcourt City Local Government Area, Rivers State. For this study, the survey research design was adopted. The choice of the design was informed by the objectives of the study as outlined in chapter one. This research design provides a quickly efficient and accurate means of assessing information about a population of interest. 

The population for this study were SMEs in Port Harcourt city local government area, Rivers state, Nigeria. A total of 134 respondents were selected from the population figure out of which the sample size was determined. In conclusion, the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN; 2013) in a collaborative study with the National Bureau of Statistics found that SMEs in Nigeria fall short of their potential to promote economic growth especially in job creation and poverty alleviation. 

One of the reasons identified by SMEDAN (2013) for these shortcomings is that the nature of leadership within these SMEs did not support organizational performance and growth (SMEDAN, 2013) as most of the SME owner-managers do not understand the impact that leadership could have on organizational performance and growth. Leadership has been described as the manner that a leader uses to influence followers to achieve set objectives (Nanjundeswaraswamya & Swamy, 2015). In a recent study, Franco and Matos (2015) conceptualized leadership as the process of getting others to understand what needs to be done and how to get it done more effectively. This conceptualization by Franco and Matos (2015) supported the argument of some researchers that effective leadership is required to deliver positive organizational outcomes (Dinh et al., 2014). Porter (1996) described effective leaders as those that drive their firms to take the right decisions in response to changes in the business environment and ensuring that organizational objectives and identity are sustained.