Effect of Leadership Styles on Counterproductive Work Behaviour Among Civil Servants in Borno State

Abstract

The study examined leadership styles and counterproductive work behaviour among civil servants
in Borno State. The study aims to discern the influence of Transformational, Transactional and
Servant leadership style on employees' engagement in counterproductive work behaviors, with a
particular focus on the unique context of a state grappling with complex challenges, such as security
concerns and reconstruction efforts. The study adopted survey research design with a population
of 25,234 civil servants of Borno State. The study sample size was 379 civil servants which was
obtained using Dilman’s (2007) formular. However, 30 percent was added to the sample size to
take care of low response rate making the sample size became 491 out of which 418 were retrieved.
Multistage sampling techniques was employed. Data was collected through the administration of
close-ended questionnaire design on five-point Likert scale. Similarly, SPSS software was used for
the preliminary analysis and PLS-SEM approach was used for the main analysis with the aid of
Smart PLS 3. The result from the study indicated that there is a significant relationship between
transformational and transactional leadership styles and counterproductive work behaviour while
no such relationship was found with servant leadership style. The study concludes by emphasizing
the importance of leadership awareness in addressing and reducing counterproductive work
behavior among civil servants in Borno State.