INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES BZU, MULTAN

Course Instructor: Dr. Javaria Abbas

Course Title: Advance Research Methods
Class: MBA business education
Semester: MBA -1ST , Morning
Selected topic: Journal of business reserch call for paper; March
2021

PROJECT SUBMITTED BY GROUP # 7:

Name Roll num

Kainat ramzan MBBE- 21-06
Saima zahid MBBE- 21-16
Sadia ashiq MBBE- 21-17
Mahnoor masood MBBE- 21-22
Noman safdar MBBE- 21-54
Will trust, risk, organization culture, the digital divide and resistance to
change feature in workplace productivity: An after Covid-19 lockdown
and social distancing perspective with moderated effect of leadership
style.
Kainat Ramzan, Saima Zahid, Sadia Ashiq, Mahnoor Masood, Noman Safdar

INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCES BZU, MULTAN

Abstract
Covid-19 spread world wide which causes so much destruction. it noticed that
lockdown and isolation were important techniques to prevent the people of all
nation from covid-19. We investigate the problems during covid-19 which effect
the employees productivity and their trust level also shattered. The gap which we
find and try to fill out is how the situational leader enhance the employee
productivity and employee wellbeing in Pakistan context during covid-19 by
different factors considering. Number of variables like digital divide, organization
culture associated with labour intensive and capital intensive work, trust and
empowerment as mediating variables, employee productivity and employee
wellbeing as interested area of study. Recently we did literature review and
develop hypothesis along with framework. In future we will conduct cross
sectional study by filling out 200 questionnaire from different employees of
different industries like textile, automobiles and banking. We will use non
probability sampling as convenience sampling and see either our positive
relationship between situational leadership and employee productivity and
employee wellbeing is true during and after covid-19.

Keywords: Digital Divide, Organization Culture, Trust, Empowerment,

Situational leadership, Employee Wellbeing, Employee productivity
Problem statement
Introduction
Today, the marketplace is reshaped by a digitalized kind of firm as Covid -19
pandemic affected not only society but also organization in which the leading
influence on employee well being and productivity by digitized work in family
settings. During lockdown, working from home (WFH) through digital platforms
became the new routine for organization employees in Pakistan. Major platforms
like Zoom, Google Meet were the new source of aligning workers' information
with other colleagues that has benefits for organizations to retain and increase
productivity of employees in flexible hours through encouraging collaborative
efforts to achieve goals. For firms who recognize this digital work advantages now
consider this as a norm rather than an option.
Companies in 2008 never recovered fully as before due to financial crisis and and
recent global outbreak of Covid-19 turbulence how affect the world of work due
to digitalized that research yet has to be examine, either this is positive or
negative? Should companies redesign their workplace? Many people enjoyed
these settings like for single parents, the people who have more responsibilities
and the new generation that mostly like to use advanced means for working but
some adult, authrodox minded people are showing resistance against these
digital settings.
The digital divide is considered an organization issue that has attracted more
researchers. It means inequality in accessing usage of information between
individuals and businesses. This creates inefficient information that impacts
human mental health and risk of conflicts. This digital divide Leads longer working
hours because of disconnectivity or loss of interaction during meetings and
informal socializing which in turn raises tiredness or creates imbalance in family
and work that affect wellbeing as well as productivity. More employees face
struggles due to large families and not finding office space at home. People feel
insecure due to sharing of data and meeting links easily that can be misuse by any
third party. Digitized work has no distinction between family and work time.So
Trusting on this digital platform as a secure information source is challenging and
that remains a question mark on usage of this platform in future and creates
resistance to use in traditional companies. Digitized work has no distinction
between family and work time.
This digital transformation as a competitive advantage is more challenging for
traditional companies than firms who are already using these platforms.
Traditional firm leaders competing with digital rivals involve more risk than
installing enterprise software programs. This creates a gap by digital divide that
will affect organizations which we address by this research as the purpose of this
attempts to bridge the lag between created digital divide in organization culture
by turbulence impact and implications of leader role in empowering employee
wellbeing. To achieve this we are applying situational leadership in this context
as a moderator
Prior researches only focus on major outcomes of digital divide and work life
conflict like subjective well being stress , anxiety. (Song, Younghwan, Jia 2018) But
we will link this concept with leadership style that can change the effectiveness
of well-being because of benefits that employees receive during work like
empowerment and autonomy. As in Pakistan there is a limited consideration
about the importance of leader role in organization and employee growth in the
society. So the research objectives of this investigation will be are as
● To study the effect of situational leadership style on employee well being
and productivity
● To find out what type of organizational culture create empowerment in
environment
● To investigate the influence of digital divide that create trust issues on
employee productivity
● To understand the causes of digital divide in Pakistan society
Our main research question are
● Will digital divide, risk, culture and organizational culture lead to employee
wellbeing and employee productivity during covid-19?
● Wil situational leadership enhance the employee trust and it will be related
to employee work productivity?
The methodology for data collection will be use Questionnaire in field settings.
Below are the reserch variables explainations with hypothesis formation.
Literature Review
Digital divide:

Digital divide is a gap between individuals , businesses and areas at different levels with regard
to access information. We mainly focus on inequality of access to information. Beaunoyer,
Dupéré, and Guitton (2020) define key digital inequalities like technical, autonomy of use, social
support networks, and experience about by COVID-19, For example for some people
technology increases well being by entertainment online classes etc and for others its increase
the loneliness mental health and addiction that decrease wellbeing. Now digital divide
considered by employees is that more time in meetings than before lockdown. Telework
reduces interactions that may worsen individuals and group performance because it limits the
opportunity of promotion , or having less bargaining power and increases stress or intensifies
work family conflicts because it blurs the boundaries between home and workplace.
For some people this digital divide is difficult to learn and don’t have much autonomy or
motivation to learn something new, especially in traditional companies. The first issue is
inefficient information communication due to the top down system. People cannot receive
every notification. It creates difficulty for employees to give any opinion in decision making that
low participation affects mentally as they are working hard. The second issue is mental
deprivation as they are exhausted with workload at home but have limited trusted ways to
communicate. So employees cannot fully interact with family members and colleagues and feel
less emotional support at times of pressure. To reduce mental deprivation Psychological
empowerment is a sense of significance, self-determination, and their impact by providing
emotional support of leaders that bring a supportive climate, which can lead to increase in
productivity (Thomas,k.w;1990).
Through normalized and explanatory theory employers are engaging labour in more
responsiveness when work is needed. Flexible working means in which workforce working
settings are arranged in a way that can get flexible hours of work in their comfort like in
lockdown.At home flexible working patterns are increasing now home and work were not
viewed as separate aspects of life. Integration and separation of work is determined by
methods in which people negotiate the boundaries and matter of individual preference. It
seems that the issue of work-life balance is a subjective matter. For some personal time it
becomes fragmented that leads to conflicts between families because extreme disruptions
affect performance and wellbeing of humans. It's important to know how we can managed this
challenges in working routines that harm people’s lives

Organization culture:
Organization culture may be defined as an environment of an organization in which employees
can freely work, interact with each other on the daily basis as well as perform regular
organizational tasks. Any organizational culture may effects employee performance and their
well-being. It may also effects trust level on employees in online platform. It is a shared system
of beliefs and way of thinking established by the leaders and founders and accepted by all
members of the organization (Klein, 2006). The way employees perceive their work
environment and organizational culture has essential importance in their well-being, health,
and enjoyment and quality of work (Hellriegel & Slocum, 1974; Kane-Urrabanzo, 2006). In
Pakistan there are many organizations having labor intense culture, these organizations prefer
to do work within the organization, because they believe that if they will turn their system to
online it will create problems of privacy. So organization having this culture has strong
contingent effect on employee well-being and productivity. Organization culture should support
online working because by this not only the employees feel freely to work but it may
sometimes add value to their work and for organization as well. A stable organizational culture
is based on a well defined system of values (Schein, 2004).

Trust:
Rousseau et al. (1998) defined trust as a "positive attitude toward others", which emerges from
social relations. Trust in workplace environment is most important phenomenon. As if we talk
about covid-19 situation in which many organization turns towards working online, it is
important for them to create trust in online working. Building trust in the organization also
helps to empower the employee in decision making. According to Bories (2007), trust is based
on assessment of integrity, credibility and benevolence of a person. Having trust on their
employees can enhance the internal satisfaction and capacity of employees to do work in more
precise manners. Trust also reduces the burden and stress level of employees, because
employees feel pleasure when their top bodies do believe on them. Trust in online working can
also create problems. Like if top bodies increase their trust level on employees, and reduce
daily check and balance of their work, it may causes leakage of their private information. This
will not only affect the employee performance but organization also become in difficult
situation. Organization culture should encourage trust in online platform, because it will
increase employee productivity. Organizations can take precautionary measures by checking
their online work day to day, and they can create meetings by each and every member of
organization.

Empowerment:
Empowerment is an important factor that plays an important role in increasing employee
productivity. By increasing empowerment in the culture employees may feel freely to do work.
When employees feel freely to do work this may leads towards achieving organizational goals
easily. Employee empowerment is regarded as a motivational practice that aims to increase the
performance by increasing the opportunities of participation and involvement in decision
making. It is mainly concerned with developing trust, motivation, participating in decision-
making, and removing any boundaries between an employee and top management (Meyerson
& Dewettinck, 2012). Empowerment and trust are basically related with each other if we talk
about Pakistan covid-19 situation when organizations trust on their employees and empower
them to do work freely from their homes or across the boundaries. Jacquiline (2014) stated that
empowered employees are likely to develop feelings of motivation that will help them to gain
the authority and control and apply the crucial knowledge and skills for dealing with customer
needs. Employees empowerment not only be a good source for organizational success but it
may leads towards employees productivity, employees well-being and as well as for completing
organizational commitments. Empowerment is the mechanism of giving an employee the
authority to make decision and is often allied with the distribution of responsibility from
managers to other employees (Saif & Saleh, 2013). Giving authority to employees in online
working also makes employees happy and satisfied because they feel low burden on them by
their top managers.

Situational leadership:
In the covid-19 we have find the gap that employees well-being and workplace productivity can
be improved or enhance by situational leaders there can be 3 styles which leader can use
during work from home and after this situation. Styles 1, Telling, directing and guiding, style 2 :
participating, facilitating and collaborating, style 3: delegating, empowering or monitoring.
According to employees skills, nature of job and risk associated with them in the new scenario
the adaptive leadership needed. People are getting mentorship and participating in unplanned
conversation but the one-fit all strategy also questionable here. For this situation especially in
Pakistan context the leader should direct and guide the employees but in the start they should
collaborate because collaboration is essential. At the time of anxiety the leader should
collaborates, which reduces the costs and improve productivity. Transformational leadership
was good but that will not fit in the Pakistan context. In Pakistan's context the leader must have
tactics to put pressure on employees, relaxing them and taking extra work by changing their
perspective.

Employee productivity:
Employee productivity is very old and important variable to discuss. In present scenario due to
pandemic the way in which industries run are now changed wholly. A conversion of internal
and external data, a conversion of work from factory to work from home which in turn
somehow difficult for Pakistan's employees to understand the technologies for working from
home. Ultimately their productivity effect. For some the productivity increases for others it
decreases. A number of factors are there like world-life balance. Mostly those factories are
effected where they use traditional methods and now a radical change came. Where the
incremental improvements doesn't happen before the arrival of covid-19. The positive
relationship between telework and job satisfaction found in one of studies ( Gajendran &
Harrison,2007; Martin &Macdonell, 2012). Because it increases autonomy, flexibility, lack of
interruption is question here?. As there are many interruptions in the home and career
stagnate, even isolation leads to depression. If employee is efficient to cope up with external
environment then the effect will be lower of all interrupting elements during covid-19
( Wang.et.al, 2021). Most important is self-management skills which must be developed in
employees.

Employee well-being:
Covid-19 suddenly caused change in work organization life worker are affected due to social
distancing, stress and unemployment. Employee well-being definition from world health
organization- as individuals assessment of their own quality of life, each employee understand
their capabilities, how to cope up with stress level, their productivity and its contribution to
society ( Gen prat, 2014). Mostly it relates to corporate socially responsible. Their concept of
self actualization and self determination. One study shows that only 13% of employees accept
the work from home. Both the employees well-being and productivity combines here or we can
say both are balanced if work-life balance there. Which ultimately lowering the stress . Here
need of social support and supervisor influence of work load and empathy must be crucial
( Hediger J. Socio Econ, 2019). Lack of personal contact will leads to lowering the well-being and
timing of work from home should be less than once a week or 3-4 times a week (Abel, T.,
McQueen D, 2021) . If this happens then both the employee productivity and well-being will be
accelerated.

Theoratical framework

DIGITAL DIVIDE EMPLOYEE

-Inefficient information WELL BEING
TRUST
-Mental depreivation
-Work &family balance


EMPOWERNMENT

ORGANIZATION EMPLOYEE
CULTURE PRODUCTIVITY

SITUATIONAL
LEADERSHIP STYLE

Hypothesis formation
Teleworking considers negative effects on mental health and emotions including wellbeing
(Mann & Holdworth, 2003) Many organizations and people use these digital platforms for the
first time. Challenge is to maintain organizational culture during these online settings.
Effectively usage of this depends on organization existing use of services and availability of skills
that vary industry to industry. Here lockdown changes the mindset of many organizations that
use digital work as a norm. but it created a thinner line between private and work for many
people, this main consequence for wellbeing and productivity of individuals. Bridging the digital
divide is now gaining attention to enable the progress of communities in both developed and
developing countries. Digital divide elimination between individuals and businesses during
meetings that only be possible with intervention of leadership style in companies. Mostly in
Pakistan there are authoritative bosses that always underestimate the individual because of not
getting fully involved during online meetings that lead to conflicts between work and family.
Some traditional company who are labor intensive show less trust in this kind of work from
home as they are traditionally work under physical involvement in company and developing this
new structure for them is a major threat.
So trust and empowerment can either mediate relation negative or positively. As
empowerment gained by freedom of work through online working and trust on this technology
remains a controversial part of digital work. To get trusted information is unusual as meeting
links circulate among whole organization that can create mess in getting right information.
H1- There is a negative relationship between digital divide and employee wellbeing or
productivity.
H2- Empowerment mediate the relationship between digital divide and employee wellbeing or
productivity
H3- Trust mediate the relationship between digital divide and employee wellbeing or
productivity
Organization culture has positive relationship with empowerment and trust because when
organization culture supports to empower the employees in decision making it lead towards
increase in employee performance and productivity. Organization culture also supports to build
trust on employees because it necessary in online working, so it is also having positive
relationship with the culture because if culture support trust then it will easy to create
otherwise it will not be created.
H4- Organization culture has positive relationship with empowerment and trust:
Organizations having culture in which employees can perform easily, in which culture supports
each and every decision of their employees and if the culture support to trust on their
employees it may increase the well-being of employees. Having supportive organizational
culture can reduces the stress level and burden level of employees.
H5- Organizational culture has positive relationship with employee well being:
Organizations culture also effect the employee productivity in positive manners because giving
freedom to employees in decision making and online working may increase employee
productivity. Culture having restricted culture that do not even support empowerment, it will
may decrease the productivity level of employees.
H6- Organizational culture has positive relationship with employee well being:
Trust and empowerment mediates the relationship because if the trust increases in
organization it will leads towards increase in productivity and their well-being. Trust mediates
relationship in a way as if organizational culture is not much supportive then by building trust in
culture can increase the employees well-being and productivity.
H7- Trust and empowerment mediates the relationship between organizational culture and
employees well-being and employees productivity:
When we link the leader with employees productivity it is very clear that fir Pakistan industry its
important to break the resistance for which is technology usage, old age employees and those
who were skilled in manual work now face the resistance of using technology and trust on them
. Firstly the situational leaders should collaborates with the employees negotiating competitive
facilities. How much important to Learn these technologies, bring a solution for employees and
then direct them. The employees and productivity will enhanced as they see the leader check
and balance there. They feel that somewhat pressurized and in Pakistan most of the cases
employees productivity high or situational leaders can conduct activities or introduce incentives
and through empowerment this could be appropriate.Apple used situational leadership but this
should be used for development level of the employees they are trying to influence.
H8-Situational leader support increase less the digital divide, trust will increase and employee
productivity will also increases.
H9-Situational leader support increase the organization culture will be creative more
empowering the employees the more will be employee productivity.
Firstly decide' people to work' or work to people is important attributes in the textile and
banking industry, automobiles where it's difficult to stay at home and doing work from home. It
wasn't efficient solution because productivity least and no wages employees receive they will
lowering Morale. The isolation was there then situational leaders can give them strategies like
how to balance the situation through zoom sessions. Reclassified into employees segment
through different roles. Upskilling their capabilities by different online courses so they can lead
to increase the understanding to the technologies. So the digital divide and risk level will be
lowering. The more support of leader then employees well-being will be high and ultimately
anxiety will be lowering.
H10-Situational leader support increase less the digital divide, trust will increase and employee
wellbeing will also increases.
H11- Situational leader support increase the organization culture will be creative more
empowering the employees the more will be employee wellbeing.

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