The Relationship among Leadership Styles, Discrimination and Inclusion in Multinational Organizations in Mauritius

Multinational organizations in the 21st century need leaders to bring about inclusion and decrease their employees’ perception of discrimination. Companies can do this by strengthening and using those dimensions of leadership styles that promote inclusion and reduce discrimination. The present paper aimed to explore the relationships between the idealized influence attributed dimension of transformational leadership style, contingent reward dimension of transactional leadership style, laissez faire leadership style, perceptions of both discrimination and inclusion, and employees’ job satisfaction. Additionally, the aim of this paper was to compare the relationships between different leadership styles and their dimensions, discrimination and inclusion in a different, never explored before culture, in Mauritius. This research is highly topical in that it aims to answer the practical question of how to manage a heterogeneous workforce to the advantage of both the employees and organizations. 117 people working in multinational organizations in Mauritius took part in this study. The results indicated that the idealized influence attributed dimension of the transformational leadership style and the dimension of the transactional leadership style which is called contingent are related positively to employees’ perceived inclusion and related negatively to employees’ perceived discrimination. Moreover, perceived inclusion of employees is related in a positive way to their job satisfaction and perceived discrimination of employees is related in a negative way to their job satisfaction. Perceived inclusion and perceived discrimination are partial mediators between leadership styles and their dimension and job satisfaction. We therefore propose that leaders working with employees of different nationalities should enhance the feeling of inclusiveness of their employees through their attitudes and by establishing a reward system.