The Impact of Leader’s Temperament on Work Absence

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to show how the temperament of leaders has an effect on temporary absence from work in public administration and may potentially be one of the causes of temporary absence from work. Research on Slovenian public administration was conducted in February 2015 and involved 3,220 respondents. A quantitative research method (survey) was used to collect the data which were then analyzed with the SPSS statistical program and Microsoft Excel. The results of the research reveal that leaders’ temperaments have a statistically signifi cant effect on temporary absence from work in public administration. The effect is evident both in the number of days as well as in the number of occurrences of absence from work. The survey results show that public administration is dominated by leaders with choleric (45%) and phlegmatic temperaments (41%). Employees with a leader with a melancholic temperament were absent from work the most (11.7 days), followed by those working under a sanguine leader (10.6 days); the greatest frequency of absence were reported for employees with a sanguine leader (1.9 times), and the fewest for those with a melancholic leader (1.5 times).

Keywords

• temporary absence from work, personal traits, temperament, leader, public administration.