THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT AT THE SAVE THE CHILDREN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The effective leaders are enablers that directly points to competent and committed employees. Studies in the organizational psychology and organizational behavior literatures have shown that leadership styles and employee commitment are of major factors to the organizational success or failure. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between leadership styles (transactional, transformational, and laissez-faire) and employee commitments (affective, continuance, and normative commitment) in of Save the Children International Ethiopia Country office. Total participants in the research were 104, included 64 support staffs and 40 leaders and senior managers, with a nonresponse rate of 15.38 percent from both leaders and subordinates. Two separate instruments, namely multifactor leadership questionnaire and organizational commitment questionnaire, were used to measure leadership styles and employees’ organizational commitment respectively. The findings of the study revealed that laissez-faire leadership style has significant and positive correlations with affective, normative and continuance employee commitments while transactional leadership style has significant and positive correlation with only continuance commitment. Transformational leadership style has insignificant negatively correlated with both affective and normative employee’s commitment and also it has insignificant positive relation with continuance employee’s commitment.