Job satisfaction, work stress, and individual work performance: does transformational leadership style make a difference in their relationship?

In today’s dynamic public sector environment, understanding the factors that drive individual employee work performance is critical to achieving organisational effectiveness. This paper aims to investigate the effects of job satisfaction and work stress on individual work performance among employees in the civil service of Sarawak, with a specific focus on the moderating role of transformational leadership style. Anchored in Social Exchange Theory, the study aims to explore how perceived workplace conditions and leadership styles shape employee performance outcomes through reciprocal exchanges. A quantitative approach will be employed, utilising a structured questionnaire adopted and adapted from established sources to collect data from 132 employees in the Ministry of Food Industry, Commodity & Regional Development (M-FICORD), Sarawak. Data analysis will be conducted using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) for preliminary descriptive and reliability analyses, while SmartPLS 4 will be used to perform structural equation modelling (SEM) to assess the hypothesised relationships and moderating effects. The study is expected to yield valuable practical and theoretical insights into the dynamics of leadership and employee performance in the public sector, while offering practical recommendations for enhancing workforce productivity, leadership development, and employee well-being in M-FICORD.