Abstract
Employee engagement is the key challenge for the modern organisations and emergingleaders. It is strongly connected to customer service, business financial results and workplaceenvironment. It has observed that leaders in the retail sector are facing this challenge and itis critical especially in the context of Pakistan where the retail is emerging segment. Thisstudy has explored the imprint of organic leadership style and connected, linked andmotivated workforce, employed in public sector and private sector retail stores in Pakistan.The study has explored if organic styles of leadership revealed by leaders working in theretail sector are cultivating a setting for employees to engage. The study has also investigatedthat if organic leadership style practised by leaders has the impact of specific behaviouraloutcomes i.e. say, stay and strive of employee engagement. The study has conducted on 549retail employees working in public and the private sector in the cities of Lahore, Karachi,Islamabad and Faisalabad (Pakistan). The researcher has used statistical software SPSS 22to conduct descriptive analysis, correlation and regression analysis for the purpose of dataanalysis. The findings of the study showed that employee perception of an organic leadership style in his/her line manager inclines to be positively associated with employee engagement with no significant differences between the public and private sector retail employee' sperception of organic leadership style and employee engagement. Further, the research has suggested that there is an association between employee perception of the organic leadership style of his/her line manager and 'Say', 'Stay' and 'Strive' (behavioural outcome) of employee engagement. The research study on the relationship between employee perception about his/her supervisor's organic leadership style and employee engagement is one of the pioneer studies in the field, as well in the retail sector in the context of developing countries like Pakistan. The study has theoretical as well as practical implications in demonstrating thespecific leadership styles to address the major challenge of engaged employees in the retailsector.
Keywords: Organic Leadership style, Employee Engagement.