Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between leadership styles (transactional,
transformational, and laissez-faire) and employees’ organizational commitments (affective, continuance,
and normative commitment) in Woreda Education offices of West Shoa Zone. By using simple random
sampling techniques, 114 participants of employees were involved in a research from clustery selected
five Woreda Education offices without a non-response rate. Two separate instruments adopted from
previous studies, namely multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ) which has 36 items and
Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) which has 12 items. These items were rated by using
a five-point Likert-scale. The study was guided by correlation research design of the quantitative method.
The survey data was processed by using an SPSS (version 27). Descriptive statistics to calculate mean
and standard deviations of employees’ responses to leadership styles being practiced in order to
determine their perceptions, MLQ of employees’ responses (independent sample), Two-tailed Pearson
correlation analysis to investigate the relationship between variables and multiple linear regressions was
used to calculate the influence of transformational leadership dimensions on organizational
commitment. The findings of the study shows that the leadership style being practiced in West Shoa
Zone Woreda Education offices were more transformational than that of transactional and followed by
laissez-faire. The level of EOC ranked as normative commitment has the highest mean score followed by
affective commitment, and then continuance commitment. Transformational full range leadership style
has significant and positive correlation with all dimensions of employees’ commitment while
transactional leadership style has significant and positive correlation with affective commitment and
normative commitment. A Laissez-faire leadership style is significantly and negatively related to affective
commitment and continuance commitment and transformational leadership style predicted employees’
organizational commitment. Finally, the researcher forwarded possible recommendations for Woreda
education office leaders and employees to work on improving leadership styles and employees’
commitment collaboratively.
