The impacts of leadership style and best
practices on company performances:
Empirical evidence from business firms in
Malaysia

Fazli Idris

a

and Khairul Anuar Mohd Ali

b

a

School of Business Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi,

43600 Selangor, Malaysia;

b

School of Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti

Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, 43600 Selangor, Malaysia

Many of the organisations competing in the fast-changing business environment are in a constant
search for a robust strategy to help survive the new global economic order, making achieving
improved performance continuously imperative. The ability to change and adapt to the new
business rules demand that organisations acquire critical capabilities. This means the foci of
organisational capabilities must hinge on the ability to direct resources on learning leadership
style that could drive performance. Leadership capability in the form of transformational style
combined with the best practice capability is the key determinants to organisational success. This
paper conceptualises these variables and tests their structural linkages to company performance.
The findings show that transformational leadership is significantly related to financial
performance, and best practice management has mediated their relationship. The study implies
that an effective management approach is the one that nurtures organisational change, and which
emphasises key aspects of future-oriented elements transformational leadership and internalising
best practice. The ability to weld these capabilities into the organisation’s change effort proves a
highly effective means to progress to world-class standard.

Keywords:

organisational capabilities; transformational leadership; best practice management;

quality management; financial performance; Malaysia

Introduction

Out-performing and staying ahead of the competition in today’s business presents one of the biggest
leadership challenges. The success of postmodern business rests on a leadership enabling process,
which is a result of many factors, both internal and external. Internally, organisations should
instill strong fundamental characteristics and create capabilities, which could drive operating prac-
tices that are more superior than the others. In studying organisational success factors, management

Total Quality Management
Vol. 19, Nos. 1 – 2, January – February 2008, 163 – 171

Corresponding author. Email: [e-mail]

1478-3363 print/1478-3371 online
# 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14783360701602130
http://www.informaworld.com

experts might look into certain company practices to isolate critical conditions that discriminate
between high performing companies and the less-superior ones. In doing this, their argument is
often based on the principle that excellent companies practice superior management approaches
compared to average companies, and this affects their performance to varying degrees. Companies
differ in the way they manage their resources, including people, capital, and technology. Thus, each
resultant vector manifests a new skill of how those resources surrounding their functional processes
are managed to produce goods and services, in winning customers.

In the context of this paper, the research behind it attempts to relate the effects of leadership

style to the company performance. This is a major issue that warrants critical investigation
because the leadership factor has increasingly shown greater influence than other resources
(Waldman, 1993; Ahire & Shaughnessy, 1998; Choi & Behling, 1997). With best practice
becoming more synonymous with performance improvement (Thompson & Strickland, 1998),
we posit that best practice could be a mediating variable to leadership-performance linkage,
and effective transformational leadership as a tier-one key driver to organisational performance
(Prabhu et al., 2000; Batley, 1996). The following section considers the notion of leadership
style, best practices and performance, which became the cornerstone of this paper.

Transformational leadership

Bass’s (1985) theory of transformational leadership differentiates between transformational
leadership and transactional leadership, where the latter is the subset of the former. According
to Bass & Avolio (1994), transformational leadership has four dimensions: (1) idealised
influence or charisma; (2) inspirational motivation; (3) individualised consideration; and
(4) intellectual stimulation. Implying these dimensions, a set of practices shown by the transfor-
mational leaders will set vision, align followers to the vision through effective communication,
and motivate followers to achieve that vision (Bass & Avolio, 1994).

TQM and leadership

A growing number of studies has reported on the leadership category throughout the 1980s to the
1990s, including TQM doctoral dissertations in USA (Jack et al., 2001). The leadership factor
has been included in studies on the critical success factors of TQM implementation (Saraph
et al., 1989; Black & Porter, 1996; Ahire et al., 1996; Anderson et al., 1994; Porter & Parker,
1993; Powell, 1995, Grandzol and Gherson, 1998; Thiagarajan and Zairi, 1998; Sa’ari and
Aspingwall, 1999; Arawati, 2000). In the competitive fitness model the leadership factor has
been identified indirectly as the mission and vision (Larrache, 2000). Flynn et al. (1994) and
Idris (2000) allowed top management support to mean leadership character in their studies.

Leadership and its relations to the success of TQM programs has been discussed in many studies

(Waldman, 1993; Ahire & Shaughnessy, 1998; Choi and Behling, 1997). TQM gurus such as
Deming, Crosby and Juran clearly recognised the role of top managers as a key factor in effective
quality management in a company. Consistent with the calls by all the quality gurus, almost all
excellence models include leadership as an enabling driver or tier-one contributory element
(EQA, 1994; MBNQA, 1997; Kanji, 1998; NPC, 2000). Waldman (1994), in discussing the
theoretical consideration of leadership and its relation to TQM, emphasised, the importance of
long-term management commitment to innovation and creativity. In their study, Ahire &
O’Shaughnessy (1996) split the sample between high and low top management commitment
and they found that firms with high top management commitment produced high quality

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products. Choi & Behling (1997) attempted to clarify why certain TQM programs ended up with
failures. By studying the managers’ attitudes towards time, market and customers, they discovered
that those leaders who have positive inclinations toward these factors seem to have more proactive
types of quality programs, which consequently affect their company performance. Miller &
Cangemi (1993) consistent with Zairi (1994) concluded that one of the most important reasons
for TQM failure was lack of total ownership among the leaders.

Leadership as capability

The leadership factor included in most models such as MBNQA, EQA, Kanji’s Model and
Larrache’s competitive fitness model (Larrache, 2000), Flynn’s world class manufacturing
model (Flynn et al., 1995) and Chye’s blue chip characteristics model (Chye et al., 2000)
could be well associated with the capability factors in a resource-based view of a firm. For
example, Mahoney & Pandian (1992), proposed that the services and rent attained from
certain resources could be the yield from the dominant logic of the top management team. It
is also true that the development of top management dominant logic is, to a certain extent,
shaped by the resources that they deal with. Furthermore, managing human intellectuals has
become a strategic issue that requires managerial capability. Grant (1991) views organisational
style, values, traditions, and leadership as different forms of intangible resources that, together,
encourage cooperation and commitment of the organisational members. Since knowledge is one
of the important organisational resources, leadership capability plays an important role to facili-
tate the acquisition of knowledge. Top companies such as Coca-Cola, GE, and General Motors
have established the position of Chief Knowledge Officer to acquire the development and use of
knowledge (Hitt et al., 1999). Others also asserted that human resources, in the forms of experi-
ence, judgments, and intelligence of managers and employees, are tangible resources to the firm
(Barney, 1991; Grant, 1991).

It has been deduced that leadership capability is a kind of capability that has great influence to

affect change in any organisation. Within the TQM lexicon, this capability means leaders’
abilities to realise formulated vision through managing quality elements to transform the
firm’s orientation towards embedding good managerial practices. It is argued therefore, that
leadership which is construed as a capability in our models is of the transformational type.
An effective leader in the context of this paper is one with the ability to inspire subordinates,
provide them with a valuable direction and care for the results. A leader with transformational
character is concerned with both the process and result that could be achieved from multiple
sources of available resources. In measuring this capability, those organisations that score
high in leadership indicators would presume to be capable of leading their organisations. We
define leadership by the ability of the organisation’s top managers to provide direction and
vision, to recognise and nurture individual abilities, and to inspire people to make a total
commitment to accomplishing organisational goals.

Best practice management as capability

To become a world-class organisation, companies must not only know what others are doing in the
market but should constantly evaluate and compare their own achievements and processes with the
more superior standards the world over. Therefore, it is critical for the organisation to search for
best practices and methods and subsequently internalise them into its own core processes. There
are many ways, relative to the selected benchmark, that one can define business practices. In the

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search for a performance-driven definition, ‘Best practices’ are considered as business methods
that provide competitive advantage through improved customer service, better asset utilisation,
or reduced costs (Webb, 2000). In reality, it is hard to find best practice in everything a
company does, thus there are no best practice companies who achieve success in everything.

Cortada (1997) defines best practices as ‘collections of activities within an organisation that

are done very, very well and ultimately are recognised as such by others’. Best practices can also
be viewed as ‘me too’ strategies initially, but that organisations should try to come up with ‘leap-
frog practices’ that they pioneer in order to be the first to have a temporary advantage over their
competitors, and subsequently build up revenue and profit streams. There is only a small chance
that one single activity works equally well for everyone (McCune, 1994). The bottom line is, a
best practice is what gives a company the capability to out-perform competitors, to grow in
market size and profits through providing compelling value to customers, employees, and share-
holders. In essence, Cortada (1997, p. 79) summed up that best practices gave an organisation the
‘capability to outperform its competitors’ as well as to produce ‘best value to customers,
employees, and shareholders’. Voss et al. (1995) advocate that companies having best practices
achieve high performance in potential areas where they compete.

By extending this view, best practices are very much related to the effective way of managing

resources. In resource-based strategy, capabilities should mean deploying resources, usually in
combination, to affect a desired end (Amit & Schoemaker, 1993). Therefore, one type of effec-
tive capability can be seen as a form of best practice. It is also interesting to note that a reverse
relationship exists since resources are required in order to implement best practices.

To strive to a world-class organisation, companies must be recognised as having multiple best

practices. Therefore, it is important for an organisation to adopt an advanced methodology con-
tinuously in managing their activities. The external benchmarking is one way to achieve best
practice. The basic tenet of benchmarking is that, for an organisation, to improve its perform-
ances, it must be able to measure its current performance against that of others as well as
against its own previous performances (McMann & Nanni, 1994). Benchmarking includes all
processes of implementing these measures, comparing your organisation’s performance with
the ‘best in class’, searching to the causes of the performance gap between your organisation
and the best, and implementing changes to close the gap (Ammons, 1996, p. 6). Techniques
such as JIT, Total Productive Maintenance, and Quality Control Circles, when implemented
effectively, could harness best practices that prove to enhance firm’s performance. Cortada,
(1997, p. 27) again notes that although private-sector organisations do a great deal of bench-
marking, most of these data are not made public because they are afraid of giving their compe-
titors competitive data. These companies believe, from a strategic perspective, that valuable data
are considered as intangible resources, which thus must be hidden from public access.

Woon (2001) surveyed 160 organisations in Singapore and found that, regardless of industry

type, manufacturing or services, best practices implementation are at a similar level in the
TQM mature organisation. He noted that a high association exists between TQM maturity
and business performance. To date, there are many varieties of scale items used to measure
the construct of best practices. Although Cortoda (1997) concentrates his writing in the area
of information technology, several elements of best practices are found useful and his elements
are listed as follows:

(1) Align the best practices searching method with the company’s strategy and objectives.
(2) Involve senior management.
(3) Emphasise continuous skills upgrading.

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F. Idris and K.A.M. Ali

(4) Benchmark major activities and important objectives.
(5) Invest in infrastructure, such as new technology.
(6) Reward successful benchmarking initiatives.
(7) Assess projects and systems continually.
(8) Communicate continuously with stakeholder.
(9) Make adjustments based on feedback.

Despite the hostile environment of today’s business, and no single best practice that works

well for everyone, evidence shows that companies who consistently advocate certain excellent
practice ultimately end up with excellent status. A study done in Australia and New Zealand
establishes strong links between best manufacturing practice and business performances
(Batley, 1996). Leaders who adopt best practices enjoy superior sales performances, superior
export growth, and positive cash flow. From this study, a best manufacturing index was devel-
oped to enable companies to compare their performance across industry in six areas: leadership,
people practice, customer focus, quality of process and product, benchmarking, and technology.

In this paper, best practice is simply defined in general terms to mean the best way of doing

things. It is operationalised using five indicators: perceived level of culture of adopting world-
class practices (ex: JIT, Six Sigma, Supplier Management, Total Productive Maintenance);
perceived level of benchmarking one practices and standards against the best competitors;
frequency of company’s visit to admired companies to learn new ideas and approach; degree
of striving to obtain national quality awards; and level of a sound quality management system
to ensure the quality of products.

Research framework

Since the constructs in this paper are not directly measurable, we proposed three latent variables
in our model. We use five manifested indicators to measure the transformational leadership.
Next, best practice, as the second latent construct was measured by five related items. The
third latent variable is company performance, which is split into two measures: financial sound-
ness, and profit. Due to the difficulty in gathering absolute data on firms’ performance, the indi-
cators used are what the respondents perceived of their company’s profit performance and
financial soundness. The research model is shown in Figure 1.

In summing up the research model, it is proposed that a higher degree of transformational

leadership style will lead to higher company performance. Since best practice has become a

Figure 1. The hypothesised relationships among variables.

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strategic tool for managing change and competitiveness, best practice is hypothesised as the
mediating variable, which will indirectly affect the company performance. We advance our
hypotheses in the following relational terms:

H

1

: Higher degree of transformational leadership mediated by best practice has a positive structural

effect on company performance.

Through H

1

, we could test the direct effect of transformational leadership to the company per-

formance and the indirect effect of best practices management to the company performance. In
all, the total effect of transformational leadership could be summed up.

We would also test the goodness of fit of the overall model.

H

0

: The overall hypotheses model has a good fit.

Sampling and methodology

This study is a sub-section of a larger study where other variables, such as organisational culture,
innovation, strategy, resource management, are also included, although they are not reported in this
paper. We conducted a cross-sectional mail survey by distributing 600 sets of questionnaires to the
CEOs of companies listed in the 2001 SIRIM ISO 9000 directory. The survey yielded 97 responses,
giving the response rate of almost 15%. In terms of informants, more than 60% of the respondent
hold managerial positions and above. The mean of their tenure with their companies is 8.34 and a
median value of 7 years with standard deviation 6.79. The companies’ mean of years in business is
25 years with the median value of 17 years and standard deviation 25 years. The mean, median and
standard deviation of the number of full time employees are 2317, 418, and 5565 respectively. The
test for reliability for each indicator to its respected construct results in a Cronbach alpha of more
than 0.70. The complete result of the reliability test is available upon request from the authors.

A LISREL model is used to confirm the structural relationship among factors. The structural

equation modelling is comparatively better than other multivariate analysis techniques, such as
multiple regression analysis, because it calculates errors of measurement in its analysis.
Moreover, it is able to do simultaneous modeling and analyse the relationship among the
latent variables. Several programs, such as LISREL by Joreskog & Sorbom (1989), EQS by
Bentler (1985) or AMOS by Arbuckle & Wothke (1989) could be used. However, in this
study, we employed the AMOS version 3.6 to analyse the data.

Results and discussion

The alternative hypothesis is supported. The prime results of structural analyses confirm our
hypothesis that best practices mediated the relationship between transformational leadership
and firm performance. The model has a good of fit with a Chi square value of 57.72 with 47
degrees of freedom and a p-value 0.136, which is considered acceptable. We strongly believe
that best practice management as a mediating variable will strongly enhance the company per-
formance. The structural loading using standardised regression weight from leadership to
company performance is only 0.055. The structural effect of leadership to best practice is con-
sidered high (0.55) while best practice also has a high score (0.54) on company performance.
This result shows that, in the sample study, the transformational leadership by itself has a
weak direct influence on the company performance. However, with the inclusion of best practice
management as a mediating variable, the regression weight increases by 0.27 (0.55 0.54).

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F. Idris and K.A.M. Ali

Therefore, the total effect of transformational leadership is 0.33. Inspecting other structural
indices also points in the same direction, that the model has an acceptable goodness of fit.
(GFI ¼ 0.916; AGFI ¼ 0.860; CFI ¼ 0.989; RMR ¼ 0.211; RMSEA ¼ 0.04.) Table 1 shows
the overall standardised regression weight.

Checking the standardised regression weight in Table 1, the indicators for transformational

leadership have very strong coefficients with the construct. For example, item no. 1 (the
ability of leaders to inspire subordinates) has a coefficient of 0.865 with the construct. The
highest standardised beta coefficient is 0.939, the ability of top managers to display charisma
by expressing confidence in making decision and actions, has a positive structural effect on
the transformational type of leadership. As for the best practice management construct, all indi-
cators or variables posit a beta coefficient of 0.70 or higher. Both indicators of company perform-
ance give a strong beta coefficient (0.870 and 0.901)

This finding is consistent with other research (Prabhu et al., 2000; Batley, 1996; Webb, 2000)

that propagates the implementation and practice of activities such as benchmarking, to help a
company perform in a competitive market place. For example, Batley (1996) suggests that for
those leaders who adopt best practices, their companies would enjoy superior sales performances,
superior export growth, and positive cash flow. Cortada (1997, p. 79) concludes that best practices
provide an organisation with the ‘capability to outperform its competitors’ as well as to produce
‘best value to customers, employees, and shareholders’. In addition, this result is consistent with
Voss et al. (1995) who advocate that companies that have best practices could achieve high
performance in the potential areas in which they compete. This study adds another perspective
into the earlier findings, as we found that the transformational type of leaders will give more
impact to the company performance if best practices management takes place.

Implications, limitations, and future research directions

The results of the study show the importance of having best practice management in a company.
By having the five practices prescribed in this research, a company would be able to increase the
company performance.

Table 1. Standardised regression weight.

Variable

Standardised regression weight

Leadership . best practice

0.552

Best practices . company performance

0.541

Leadership . Performance

0.055

Leadership . l1

0.865

Leadership . l2

0.902

Leadership . l3

0.939

Leadership . l4

0.885

Leadership . l5

0.846

Best practices . bp1

0.708

Best practices . bp2

0.776

Best practices . bp3

0.701

Best practices . bp4

0.701

Best practices . bp5

0.843

Company performance . financial soundness

0.870

Company performance . profit

0.901

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169

There are different categories of performance. The comprehensive methodology such as

Kaplan’s balance scorecard approach would be more holistic to measure company performance
and should be used for future study. This study uses managers’ perception to assess the company
performance. The researchers use one item indicator to measure the financial soundness and
profitability of a company; although this is acceptable and achieves the objective of assessing
company performance, it could be improved by using company financial data as a backup.
The samples are limited to ISO 9000 listed companies; thus, generalisations to the different
types of Malaysian companies are limited. Future studies could include other companies,
such as those blue-chip type companies listed by the KLSE company directory.

Conclusion

This paper has shown that leadership style has a positive structural relationship with financial
performance. This implies that transformational leadership is deemed suitable for managing
Malaysian organisations. Organisations that have leadership capability to change their manage-
ment approach using best practice will further improve their performance. Best practice is con-
sidered as a capability that, given proper resources, can be used to enhance profitability and
financial soundness of a firm. Therefore, firms who want to adopt the best practice approach
must resource their initiatives and increase the transformational style of managing. Because
both transformational leadership and best practice management work to nurture improved
performance, they are complementary capabilities that should be given serious attention by
organisations aiming to be world class.

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