Leading with Satisfaction: How Leadership Style, Job Satisfaction, and Motivation Drive Managerial Performance in an Indonesian Trading Firm
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61656/sbamr.v8i2.098Keywords:
Leadership Style, Job Satisfaction, Motivation, Managerial PerformanceAbstract
Purpose: This study aims to examine and empirically prove the effect of leadership style, job satisfaction, and work motivation on managerial performance at PT. Gading Murni Surabaya, a private trading company selling stationery and writing instruments, and to identify which of the three variables exerts the most dominant effect on managerial performance.
Method: A quantitative explanatory design was applied. Because the population of managers at the company was small, all 30 managers across the top, middle, and lower management levels were taken as respondents through a census rather than a probability sample. Primary data were collected with a structured seven-point semantic differential questionnaire covering leadership style, job satisfaction, motivation, and managerial performance, and were analyzed with multiple linear regression after item validity, reliability, normality, and classical assumption test.
Findings: After two items with weak item total correlations were removed during validity testing, all remaining instrument items were valid and reliable, the data were normally distributed, and the regression model showed no multicollinearity or heteroscedasticity. The model was statistically fit, and leadership style, job satisfaction, and motivation jointly explained the variance in managerial performance, with job satisfaction carrying the largest partial contribution among the three predictors.
Implications: The findings suggest that managers at small and medium trading enterprises benefit most directly from investments that raise day to day job satisfaction, such as clearer promotion paths, financial security, and stronger working relationships among managers, while leadership style and motivation remain necessary complements rather than substitutes for a satisfaction focused human resource strategy.
Originality: The originality of this study lies in revisiting a well-established set of managerial behavior variables through a full population census of an under researched small private trading company in Surabaya, Indonesia, updating the theoretical discussion with recent Scopus and Web of Science indexed evidence, and reporting which single driver of managerial performance deserves priority attention when organizational resources for people management are limited.
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