Abstract:
Leadership style has often been considered as one of the vital factors that can enhance employees’ commitment and it is seen as the live wire for the attainment of organizational goals. The main objective of this study was to assess the effect of leadership styles on employees’ organizational commitment in Ambo Woreda public organizations. The study was guided by correlation research design of the quantitative approach in five purposely selected Woreda public organizations. By using simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques, 80 employees and 32 leader respondents were involved in the study. Two separate instruments adopted from previous studies, namely multifactor leadership questionnaire which has 36 items and Organizational Commitment Questionnaire which has 12 items were used as a data instrument tool. These items were rated by using a five-point Likert-scale. The survey data was processed by using an SPSS (version 27). Descriptive statistics to calculate mean and standard deviations of leaders’ and employees’ responses to leadership styles dominantly practiced in order to determine their perceptions, Multi leader questionnaire of leaders’ and employees’ responses (independent sample), multiple linear regressions was used to calculate the effect of leadership styles on organizational commitment. The findings of the study shows that the leadership style dominantly practiced in Ambo Woreda public organizations were more transactional than that of transformational and followed by laissez-faire. The level of employees’ was ranked as continuance commitment has the highest mean score followed by normative commitment, and then affective commitment. There is strong, positive and significant relationship between leadership style dimensions and employees’ organizational commitment with Pearson correlation result (.992**) and P-value of (0.000). Leadership styles were found statistically significant to predict employee commitment and there was a significant linear relationship between independent variables and dependent variables. Out of the three leadership variables; transactional leadership style has the highest contribution followed by transformational leadership style, whereas laissez-faire leadership style has the least contribution in predicting employees’ organizational commitment. Finally, the researcher forwarded possible recommendations for leaders and employees of Ambo Woreda public organizational to work on improving leadership styles and employees’ commitment collaboratively.
