Can leader direction and employee participation co‐exist?: Investigating interaction effects between participation and favourable work‐related attitudes among Maltese middle‐managers

Employee participation is an important construct in contemporary organisations. Recently, the argument has concentrated on whether leader direction and participation can co‐exist. It is argued that leader direction is perceptually acceptable by employees at the strategic level of the decision process but is interpreted as intrusive at the tactical (task) level. This study examined the possibility of any interaction effects between leader direction at the task level and participation, and whether this exacerbated the relationship between participation and favourable work‐related attitudes. A total of 108 middle managers were surveyed using measures for both dimensions of leader direction, participation, job satisfaction, commitment and intrinsic motivation. Separate two‐step moderator regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesis. Results indicate that while participation predicts significantly all work‐related attitudes, both leader direction variables exacerbated the relationship between participation and job satisfaction. Implications of the results and future research are also discussed.