Organizational Commitment and Leadership Styles Essay

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Abstract

This study attempts at examining organizational approach to leadership and workforce dedication among five private firms in Lahore, Pakistan. The study sample will be a total of 185 personnel (both females and males), chosen via convenience sampling. Subjects’ organizational dedication and leadership approach will be evaluated with the aid of the OCQ (Organizational Commitment Questionnaire) and MLQ (Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire). Data analysis will be conducted by relying on ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), correlation analysis, and regression analysis techniques. Research results will expand the extant knowledge pool.

Introduction

The term ‘organizational commitment’ encompasses an emotional bond, motivation, and a feeling of belongingness, which play a part in corporate development. An employee believes it is his/her ethical and moral obligation to consider and strive for the organization’s long-term development, which will also ultimately serve to help the employee fulfil individual goals (Gautam, Van Dick, & Wagner, 2004, p. 301). Essentially, this dedication is the bridge linking the organization and its workforce. It is a measure of their level of focus and engagement. Further, it informs one of the level of integration of individual and corporate goals (Feather & Rauter, 2004, p. 85). Personnel retention or dedication to a firm may occur for a number of reasons (e.g., psychological association with the firm resulting in love for one’s job, a lucrative compensation package, or financial stability which might be lost if the individual loses his/her job) (Loi, Hang? Yue, & Foley, 2006, p. 110).

Hence, by examining the multitude of reasons which might be responsible for ensuring an individual remains attached to the organization, one can clearly witness negative as well as positive impacts on personnel self-worth and job satisfaction (Lee & Peccei, 2007, p. 671). Corporate commitment reveals employees’ emotional attachment to the corporation and level of involvement (including motivation and the zeal to go the extra mile) displayed when it comes to fulfilling organizational goals. Thus, corporate commitment deals with measuring employees’ levels of association, interest, motivation and engagement with regard to a given company (Meyer, Becker, & Vandenberghe, 2004, p. 665). For the purpose of retaining personnel and paying closer attention to the reasons underlying their choice to continue working for the organization, the three-dimensional corporate commitment model will be used. The three dimensions of the model assist in understanding personnel conduct and ways of improving their commitment levels through taking those dimensions into account (Hennig-Thurau, 2004, p. 470).

Clearly, corporate commitment has major organizational as well as workforce implications, which have been studied by a number of research scholars in their many research works. According to Durkin and Bennett (2000, p. 127), resignations and truancy are a couple of adverse impacts linked to absence of personnel commitment to their job. As Drucker (1999, p. 112) suggests, modern-day corporations have been shifting towards organizational structures wherein rank implies responsibility rather than power, with the supervisor required to motivate and encourage rather than order his/her subordinates around. Thus, for being effective, managers must encourage their coworkers, superiors, and juniors to back their ideas and strategies, and inspire them to ensure the decisions taken are carried to fruition (Blickle, 2003, p. 51). Organizations must be aware of the elements significantly contributing to or affecting personnel commitment enhancement. Swanepoel, Scheck, Erasmus, and Van Wyk (2000, p. 64) underlined the fact that it is pivotal to adopt leadership approaches conducive to workforce commitment for successful organizational implementation of business plans, goal achievement, human resource optimization, and gaining an edge over competition. Prior managerial performance studies underscore the fact that a key element of effective management is managers’ capability of influencing other people. Committed workers are naturally more devoted and motivated to fulfil corporate goals (Pfeffer, 1998, 98).

Affective commitment. The term ‘affective commitment’ is used to refer to the degree of employees’ affection for and attachment to their organization. At times, personnel do get psychologically attached to the organization, which may be for a number of reasons, including healthy internal relations, peer motivation, and a friendly and good workplace climate (Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006). According to this element of affective commitment, a workforce member remains with the company for the simple reason that he desires not to quit. Here, a congruence is witnessed between individual and corporate goals. In fact, workforce members who exhibit a high level of this dimension are typically shown to hold positive attitudes with regard to accomplishment of organizational goals owing to the fact that they lack an economic motive to remain with the organization (Powell & Meyer, 2004, p. 163).

Continuance commitment.

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The element of continuance commitment deals with the costs and risks linked to quitting a job. This dimension addresses personnel needs driving their decision to continue working for a given company. A workforce member may not quit his/her job for any of the following reasons: evaluation, compensation package, additional benefits like health insurance, or hopes of a promotion in the near future. Hence, the need for one or more of the aforementioned benefits will cause them to remain with the company (Powell & Meyer, 2004, p. 163). Therefore, this element reveals that personnel remain on account of their lack of more lucrative or advantageous substitutes and alternatives, in addition to their considerable degree of investment in the form of efforts, time, and potential future gain at the company where they are presently employed (Meyer et al., 2004, 991).

Normative commitment. The element of normative commitment deals with the level of engagement required of an employee in a given company. Personnel exhibiting normative commitment remain with the company as they think they ought to be doing so (Meyer & Parfyonova, 2010, p. 285). Normative commitment connects personnel’s ethical and moral beliefs with regard to their company. Personnel believe they are obliged to remain loyal to an organization which does them something good (Gellatly, Meyer, & Luchak, 2006, p. 336).

A workforce member who displays this form of commitment is dedicated to a firm owing to their belief that the firm offers them relevant benefits and caters to their individual needs. Such personnel remain with a company despite sometimes not experiencing adequate job satisfaction or despite having access to better job opportunities elsewhere (Gellatly et al., 2006, p. 336).

Leadership

One way of defining the term ‘leadership’ is: leadership denotes the exertion of influence on the part of one individual over others for facilitating the achievement of corporate or team objectives. It is widely believed that a leader is capable of making a difference by influencing individual employees, teams, or even whole companies. A leader is lauded if everything goes right and blamed if anything goes wrong. Leadership efficacy refers to how far leaders aid companies or teams in accomplishing their goals. Research scholars have attempted at finding an answer to the following question: why are certain leaders more effective as compared to others? The leadership behavior model revolves around what a leader actually does (or, in other words, the distinct behaviors that are performed by efficient leaders, which inefficient ones fail to carry out). This approach attempted at identifying leadership behaviors which facilitate individual, corporate or team goal attainment. A number of different researches have helped identify the following leadership behavior categories – initiating structure and consideration. The former class of behaviors refers to behaviors conducted for ensuring completion of corporate tasks and adequate subordinate performance of their respective jobs. Goal establishment, determination of a strategy for achieving set goals, work delegation among subordinates, and subordinate encouragement to perform tasks assigned come under initiating structure behaviors. On the other hand, the latter category of behaviors includes leadership trust in subordinates, and value and respect for sound leader-subordinate relationships (e.g., friendliness, making subordinates feel they are at equal rank with their leader, and adequately explaining their actions) (Hunter & Thatcher, 2007, p. 956).

Yukl (2005, p. 55) states that the wealth of research works on leadership theories may be classified into the following 5 general theories: behavioral, trait, situational or contingency, influence and power, and contemporary integrative approaches. The trait theory deals with intrinsic individual traits of leaders; the initial trait leadership theory was grounded in the idea that: a set of universal traits exist within a leader, which end up making them effective leaders; these traits are innate, fairly unchanging, and apply to diverse situations. The leadership models grouped under the behavioral theories deal with leaders’ behaviors.

The transactional approach to leadership is a give-take leadership approach (Bass, 1985, p. 112). The chief emphasis of transactional leaders is process; they follow systems wherein they are responsible for controlling their subordinates and activities to be performed on the basis of pre-determined targets. Subordinates are rewarded on the basis of how well they perform their jobs. For instance, personnel displaying poor performance are penalized, while good performance is appropriately rewarded. To put it simply, leaders decide on rewards for personnel based on task accomplishment levels (Hand, Hicks, & Bahr, 2015, p. 43).

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