Leadership styles as correlates of job involvement among librarians in colleges of education in South-South, Nigeria

This study examined autocratic, transformational and democratic leadership styles as correlates of job involvement in colleges of education libraries in south/south Nigeria. Three research questions were raised, and three hypotheses were tested at 0.05level of significance. Correlational research survey method was adopted in the study. The population of the study was 211 library staff. Two sets of questionnaires were used to collect data, they were titled “Librarian’s Leadership Style Questionnaire (LLSQ)” and “Library Staff Job Involvement Questionnaire (LSJIQ)”. The data collected were analyzed using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation (r) method to answer research questions and Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation (r) analysis was used to test the null hypotheses. The findings revealed a very low negative relationship (-0.18) between autocratic leadership style and job involvement, average positive relationship (0.55) between transformational leadership style and job involvement and positive relationship(0.65) between democratic leadership style and library staff job involvement. The hypotheses showed a significance relationship in the perception of library staff, there is an average positive relationship between librarian’s leadership style and job involvement of library staff in college of education libraries in South-South, Nigeria. It was concluded that there is regression analysis showed that the combination of autocratic, transformational, and democratic leadership styles significantly correlate library staff job involvement. With this result, it is pertinent to use different leadership style for different situations for attainment of desired job involvement of staff and will give room for effective library services. The study recommended that librarians should combine the three leadership styles as the situation arises to encourage positive relationship between librarian and library staff that facilitate job involvement of library staff in college of education libraries in South-South, Nigeria.