Leadership Practices and Organizational Commitment

OBJECTIVE
To examine the relationship between organizational commitment and leadership practices as an antecedent variable.

METHODOLOGY
Respondents were employees of a large music company located within the southeastern part of the U.S. Every employee was surveyed, with 141 responding (59% response rate). In addition to the LPI-Observer, participants completed the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (Porter, et al. 1974) and provided demographic data (gender, age, length of service, job classification, and educational level). The majority of respondents were college-educated females, non-managers, between 20 and 29 years of age with less than three years of service.

KEY FINDINGS
All five leadership practices were significantly related to organizational commitment. There was also a relationship found between gender and organizational commitment, but not between job classifications and organizational commitment.

The author concludes: “The findings of this study showed a positive relationship between all five leadership practice variables and organizational commitment. Of the five practices, enabling others to act had the strongest relationship to commitment while inspiring a shared vision had the smallest relationship. However, inspiring a shared vision was still a significant correlation to organizational commitment. This research testing the relationship between these two sets of variable is unprecedented” (p. 87).