777 Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice Volume 5(2), 2013, pp. 777–785, ISSN 1948-9137 THE INFLUENCE OF DOMINANT LEADERSHIP STYLES ON THE EMPLOYEES’ BEHAVIOR: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE ROMANIAN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS GEORGE SCHIN schingeorge@yahoo.com Dunărea de Jos University, Galaţi MARGARETA RACOVITA marga_racovita@yahoo.com Dunărea de Jos University, Galaţi ABSTRACT. The paper is focused on the identification of dominant leadership styles of the managers from Romanian public institutions and their correlations with employees’ behaviors in order to achieve superior performances. The research is performed on a sample of Romanian managers from different public institutions. The empirical study analyzes by means of statistical methods, facilitated by the use of SPSS software, the main correlations between the dominant leadership styles of the managers from these institutions and the employees’ behaviors, reflected on their loyalty degree, their motivation degree and their professional performances level. The research results outline several managerial implications, based on relevant information about the opportunities to enhance the performances of the public institutions by adopting the most appropriate leadership style. Keywords: leadership style, organizational culture, public management, human resources, professional performance 1. Introduction Leadership is the ability of a person to organize and focus the human efforts on the accomplishment of a goal. In its pure state, leadership leads to performance, by generating a high level of motivation to all the employees from an organization. One of the most outstanding personalities in management science, Peter Drucker, famously stated that “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things” (Hesselbein and Godsmith, 2006). Organizational performance may be influenced by a number of factors, such as, the employees’ high satisfaction with their jobs,