The effect of leadership support on organizational performance: Evidence from the judiciary of Tanzania High Court, Dar Es Salaam Zone

Abstract

Leadership support is among the institutional factors that affects the motivation of employees, institutional effectiveness, service delivery and productivity of employees. This study examined the impact of Leadership Support on the performance of the Judiciary of Tanzania High Court, Dar es Salaam Zone. In conducting the study, Human Capital Theory was used and a descriptive research design with a mixed methods approach was used. The target population consisted of 127 staff members (judges, resident magistrates, and HR staff members). The size of sample was determined by Yamane's formula, and usable data was collected from 95 respondents with a response rate of 97.93% of the sample. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation analysis were used to analyse quantitative data and thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data. Overall, findings revealed a positive perception of leadership support among employees. Senior leadership provided adequate support for achieving organizational goals with more than 80% saying agreed or strongly agreed; more than 78.05% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that senior leadership encouraged high performance. Leaders' provision of resources and guidance, motivation of employees, and responding to employee needs and challenges were also reported by respondents. The result of the Pearson correlation analysis between leadership support and organizational performance showed that there was a strong positive correlation (r = 0.782; p< .01). The qualitative findings also showed that leadership support led to an improvement in communication, cooperation, trust, empowerment, innovation, motivation and resources allocation of staff. There was, however, some variation in terms of the consistency of leadership support also reported. The study concludes that Leadership support is one of the important performance enabling organizational resources in Judiciary of Tanzania High Court Dar es Salaam Zone. The study suggests the need to adopt supportive management practices at institutional level, develop leadership, enrich leadership responsiveness to feedback and resources, and improve monitoring of consistency of leadership across departments.