Business Managers/Executives/Administrators
OBJECTIVE The purpose of this research project was to examine the relationship between leadership practices and organizational commitment.
METHODOLOGY A convenience sample involving two organizations was utilized, with one being a manufacturing facility, a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company, and the other a small family-owned publishing company. The first organization had a survey population of 149 participants from a single department (26 participated) while the second organization had 45 possible respondents (31 participated). Respondents completed the Leadership Practices Inventory Observer and the TCM Employee Commitment Survey (Meyer & Allen, 2004). The typical respondent was female (68%), between 30-49 years of age (63%), with a high school (42%) or college degree (40%), had over 12 years of employment with their current employer (44%), and were not in a leadership position (89%). In this study, coefficient alpha was .90 for Model and Enable, .93 for Inspire and Challenge, and .94 for Encourage for the LPI-Observer.
KEY FINDINGS The most frequently engaged in leadership practice was Enable, followed by Model, then Encourage and Challenge, and then Inspire. There were positive relationships between all five leadership practices and all three types of commitment; and this reached statistical significance for both Affective (want to stay and perform at a high level) and Normative (stay because they feel they out to stay) commitment, but not Continuance (stay because they have to do so) commitment.