Transactional Leadership Practices and Employee Performance in the Nigerian Construction Industry: A Case of H&M Nigeria Limited, Kano State

The employee performance has been one of the major challenges in the construction industry, at Nigeria, because the industry is project based, has rigid deadlines, safety issues, and requires regular supervision and motivation. Ineffective leadership practises have been associated with low productivity, low quality of work, and low adherence to organisational standards in most construction companies such as the H&M Nigeria Limited, Kano State. It is on this background that this conceptual paper will explore the association between the practise of transactional leadership and the performance of employees in the construction industry in Nigeria. The general aim of the research is to conceptually examine the effects of dimensions of transactional leadership contingent reward, active management-by-exception, passive management-by-exception and performance-based punishment/corrective discipline on the performance outcomes of the employees. The paper uses a conceptual research approach, where the researcher uses only secondary sources (scholarly journals, academic books, conference papers, newspaper articles and other institutional and historical publications). Using systematic literature review and thematic analysis, the available theories and empirical information on leadership and performance were modelled to generate a conceptual framework on what explained the leadership- performance relationship. The results of the analysis indicate that contingency rewards and active management-by-exception are theoretically linked to better employee productivity, quality of work, and compliance, whereas the passive management-by-exception has poorer results of the performance. Corrective discipline based on performance is discovered to increase accountability as long as it is applied equally. The research concludes that proper implementation of transactional leadership practises can help increase the performance of employees in construction companies considerably. It suggests formal reward mechanisms, active supervision and impartial disciplinary measures to enhance the performance and project success.

Keywords: Transactional leadership, Employee performance, Contingent reward, Construction industry, Nigeria.