THE PARTICULARITIES OF LEADERSHIP STYLES AMONG DUTCH SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESS OWNERS

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the particularities of the leadership styles practiced by the small and medium business owners from a developed western European country, the Netherlands. The three leadership styles that we have used in our research are Autocratic, Democratic and Laissez-faire, the difference between them being the way the leaders make decisions, their involvement in the day to day activities and the degree of freedom and responsibility that their giving their subordinates. The main research instrument used was a 23 questions survey, based on which we could determine the dominant leadership style for each respondent. This survey has been applied on a sample of 128 Dutch small and medium business owners, from which 100 responses could be used for the actual research. The results have shown us that the dominant leadership styles among Dutch SME owners is the democratic one and we have also identified a series of factors, such as the company’s age and the owner’s sex that are having a significant influence upon the practiced style. The results of this research will be used in a future study in which we will make a comparison between the particularities of leadership styles among Romanian and Dutch small and medium business owners.

Keywords

• leadership styles
• small and medium business owners
• the Netherlands
• autocratic
• democratic
• laissez-faire