Ethical Leadership and Work Engagement in Wood Carving Cottage Industry in Annang Community of Nigeria

Abstract

Recently there has been a dearth in the number of people that embrace the traditional craft of wood carving business in Annang community. Though number of thing could have accounted for dearth in the business but unethical practices in the leading and managing of businesses may not be rule out of this. The challenge where leaders fail to regard the leadership of ethics in a business is also critical. This introduces the further problem of leaders struggling to win the trust of their followers because their integrity is constantly being questioned. This study which is descriptive in nature and made use of purposive and accidental sampling techniques is set out to investigate the impact of ethical leadership on work engagement in wood carving business among the Annang people. To satisfy the objective of this study two hypotheses were formulated. Four-point Likert scale questionnaire and interview schedule were used to gather data for this study from two hundred respondents in four Annang communities. And data collected was analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient. The analyses revealed that the calculated R-value of 0.68 and 0.48 were higher than the critical R-value of .195 at 0.5 level of significance with 198 degrees of freedom respective; this showed that leadership trust and integrity influence work engagement. The study recommended that leadership quality should be improve through promotion of open information sharing and practical guidelines that would endear a fair attitude towards relating with the workers.