Leadership Styles and Organizational Commitment in Pakistan

Introduction to Organizational Commitment

The term organizational commitment encompasses an emotional bond, motivation, and a feeling of belongingness, all of which play a part in corporate development. An employee believes it is his or her ethical and moral obligation to consider and strive for the organization's long-term development — an effort that will also ultimately 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 employees' level of focus and engagement, and it informs one of the degree to which individual and corporate goals are integrated (Feather & Rauter, 2004, p. 85). Personnel retention or dedication to a firm may occur for a number of reasons — for example, psychological association with the firm resulting in love for one's job, a lucrative compensation package, or financial stability that might be lost if the individual leaves (Loi, Hang-Yue, & Foley, 2006, p. 110).

By examining the multitude of reasons that might keep an individual attached to an organization, one can observe both negative and positive impacts on personnel self-worth and job satisfaction (Lee & Peccei, 2007, p. 671). Corporate commitment reveals employees' emotional attachment to the corporation and their level of involvement — including motivation and the willingness to go the extra mile — 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 better understanding the reasons underlying their choice to continue working for the organization, the three-dimensional corporate commitment model is employed. The three dimensions of the model assist in understanding personnel conduct and identifying ways to improve commitment levels (Hennig-Thurau, 2004, p. 470).

Corporate commitment has major organizational as well as workforce implications, which have been studied by a number of researchers. According to Durkin and Bennett (2000, p. 127), resignations and absenteeism are two adverse impacts linked to a lack of personnel commitment. As Drucker (1999, p. 112) suggests, modern-day corporations have been shifting toward organizational structures in which rank implies responsibility rather than power, with supervisors required to motivate and encourage rather than simply order subordinates. For managers to be effective, they must encourage coworkers, superiors, and juniors to support their ideas and strategies, and inspire them to carry decisions through to fruition (Blickle, 2003, p. 51).

Organizations must be aware of the elements that significantly contribute to or affect personnel commitment. Swanepoel, Scheck, Erasmus, and Van Wyk (2000, p. 64) underlined 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 competitive advantage. 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, p. 98).

Dimensions of Organizational Commitment

The term affective commitment refers to the degree of employees' affection for and attachment to their organization. Personnel sometimes become psychologically attached to the organization for a number of reasons, including healthy internal relations, peer motivation, and a friendly workplace climate (Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006). According to this dimension, a workforce member remains with the company simply because he or she does not wish to leave. A congruence is observed between individual and corporate goals. Workforce members who exhibit a high level of affective commitment typically hold positive attitudes toward the accomplishment of organizational goals, owing to the fact that they lack an economic motive to remain with the organization (Powell & Meyer, 2004, p. 163).

The dimension of continuance commitment deals with the costs and risks linked to quitting a job. It addresses the personnel needs that drive the decision to continue working for a given company. A workforce member may choose not to leave for any of the following reasons: performance evaluations, compensation packages, additional benefits such as health insurance, or hopes of a near-future promotion. The need for one or more of these benefits causes them to remain with the company (Powell & Meyer, 2004, p. 163). This element reveals that personnel stay on account of their lack of more lucrative or advantageous alternatives, in addition to their considerable investment of effort, time, and potential future gain at their current employer (Meyer et al., 2004, p. 991).

The element of normative commitment deals with the sense of obligation an employee feels toward the organization. Personnel exhibiting normative commitment remain with the company because they believe they ought to do so (Meyer & Parfyonova, 2010, p. 285). Normative commitment connects employees' ethical and moral beliefs to their organization; personnel believe they are obliged to remain loyal to an organization that has done something good for them (Gellatly, Meyer, & Luchak, 2006, p. 336).

A workforce member who displays this form of commitment is dedicated to a firm because they believe the firm offers them relevant benefits and caters to their individual needs. Such personnel remain with a company even when they do not experience adequate job satisfaction or when better opportunities exist elsewhere (Gellatly et al., 2006, p. 336).

Leadership Theories and Styles

One definition of leadership is: the exertion of influence by one individual over others to facilitate the achievement of corporate or team objectives. It is widely believed that a leader can make a difference by influencing individual employees, teams, or even whole companies — lauded when things go right and held responsible when they go wrong. Leadership efficacy refers to how far leaders help companies or teams accomplish their goals.

The leadership behavior model focuses on what a leader actually does — specifically, the distinct behaviors performed by effective leaders that ineffective ones fail to carry out. Research has identified two key leadership behavior categories: initiating structure and consideration. Initiating structure behaviors ensure completion of corporate tasks and adequate subordinate performance; they include goal establishment, strategy formulation, work delegation, and subordinate encouragement. Consideration behaviors, by contrast, encompass leadership trust in subordinates and respect for sound leader-subordinate relationships — for example, friendliness, treating subordinates as equals, and clearly explaining decisions (Hunter & Thatcher, 2007, p. 956).

Yukl (2005, p. 55) classifies the wealth of research on leadership theories into five general categories: behavioral, trait, situational or contingency, influence and power, and contemporary integrative approaches. The trait theory deals with intrinsic individual characteristics of leaders, grounded in the idea that a universal set of innate, relatively stable traits makes individuals effective leaders across diverse situations. The behavioral theories deal instead with observable leader behaviors.

The transactional approach to leadership is a give-and-take model (Bass, 1985, p. 112). The chief emphasis of transactional leaders is process: they operate within systems in which they control subordinates and activities on the basis of predetermined targets. Subordinates are rewarded according to how well they perform. Personnel displaying poor performance are penalized, while good performance is appropriately rewarded. In short, leaders determine rewards for personnel based on task accomplishment levels (Hand, Hicks, & Bahr, 2015, p. 43). Power distance has been linked more strongly to the transactional leadership approach, since personnel are instructed by superiors on task performance, resulting in a larger superior-subordinate communication gap and a corresponding degree of power distance.

The transformational style of leadership involves leaders and their subordinates helping one another progress to a higher level of motivation and confidence (Nemanich & Keller, 2007, p. 51). A transformational leader, drawing on a strong personality and clear corporate vision, can motivate those working under his or her direction to alter current perceptions, expectations, and drives, and to strive toward shared objectives. A large number of positive outcomes have been associated with this leadership style (Piccolo & Judge, 2004, p. 760), and research evidence indicates that a transformational leader can bring about results valued by the majority of employees, managers, and organizations.

Transformational leaders effectively persuade followers to put in extra effort by directly boosting followers' self-confidence, expanding their needs to include transcendental interests, and thereby improving the perceived value of outcomes (Bass, 1985). Subordinates in organizations that adopt the transformational approach display greater satisfaction with their superiors and their jobs compared to those in organizations that adopt the laissez-faire leadership style. Research also shows a robust relationship between transformational leadership and employees going the extra mile in accomplishing corporate tasks — what is also termed corporate citizenship behavior (Judge & Piccolo, 2004, p. 762). Furthermore, a transformational leader demonstrates the potential to inspire followers to perform beyond what is ordinarily expected of them (Howell & Avolio, 1992, p. 44). Bass (1990) identifies three chief mechanisms through which this occurs: (1) increasing personnel awareness of corporate goals; (2) urging colleagues to prioritize corporate goals over individual interests; and (3) stimulating and fulfilling the higher-order needs of subordinates.