THE EFFECT OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE WORK SYSTEMS ON SELF-LEADERSHIP

Self-leadership has emerged as a substitute for classical leadership approaches that treat external supervision as a requirement and focus on the leader rather than the employee. It is treated as a way of coping with the instability of the business environment, because organizations should utilize every single employee to be more lateral and adaptive. Self-leadership is a concept which asserts that every single employee can direct herself/ himself when given the opportunity. In literature, self-leadership is majorly considered as an outcome of personality factors. In this paper, the effects of some contextual factors- sub-practices of high-performance work systems (HPWS)- on self-leadership are investigated through a survey conducted on a sample of 212 participants. According to results, participation in decision making, job security, selective staffing and results-oriented appraisal have positive contributions to self-leadership, whereas, contrary to expectations, extensive training is found to affect self-leadership negatively. Internal mobility, incentive rewards and job descriptions have no significant effect on self-leadership.