Effect of integrative leadership style on organizational commitment in technical institutions in Kenya

Abstract

Employees are an important asset to any organization. To utilize this asset maximally, the commitment of employees to the organization is crucial. Leadership and employee participation are thought to influence the organizational commitment of employees. The general objective of the study was to establish the effect of integrative leadership style on organizational commitment as moderated by employee participation in technical institutions in Kenya. The study population was all the 3114 lecturers in the 47 technical institutions in Kenya. Both stratified sampling and simple random sampling techniques were adopted to get the sample institutions and twenty two gender-based members from each institution to be included in the study. A pilot test was conducted to detect weaknesses in design and instrumentation. A sample of 343 respondents was used. Of the 343 respondents, 278 completed the questionnaires giving a response rate of 81.05%. Cronbach‟s alpha was used to test for internal reliability of each variable used in the study. Data analysis was done by use of descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. In addition, multiple regression was applied in order to analyze the effect of integrative leadership style on organizational commitment as moderated by employee participation. The study findings revealed that integrative leadership style comprising transformational leadership, transactional leadership and laissez-faire leadership had a significant effect on organizational commitment and its dimensions. Further, the findings showed that transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles each had a significant effect on organizational commitment. However, laissez-faire leadership had a significant effect on organizational commitment independently but not jointly. Employee participation was found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between integrative leadership style and organizational commitment. Employee participation was also found to moderate the relationship between integrative leadership style and both affective and normative commitment. However, there was no moderating effect on the relationship between integrative leadership style and continuance commitment. It was concluded that transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles each xxiii had a significant effect on organizational commitment. It was also concluded that integrative leadership style has a significant effect on organizational commitment and its three dimensions namely: affective, continuance and normative commitment. Another conclusion was that employee participation has a moderating effect on the relationship between integrative leadership style and organizational, affective and normative commitment. However, employee participation does not have a moderating effect on the relationship between integrative leadership style and continuance commitment. It is recommended that leaders should embrace integrative leadership style as it significantly affects organizational commitment. In order to increase organizational commitment, leaders should employ both transformational and transactional leadership styles. There is need to have more employee participation schemes employed in the technical institutions as employee participation moderates the relationship between integrative leadership style and organizational commitment. Research should be conducted on the effect of the components of transformational and transactional leadership styles on organizational commitment. Future research to be conducted to establish why the effects of integrative leadership style and employee participation