Effect of Leadership Style on Employee Commitment at different level in Organized Retail Industry

Abstract

newline Keywords- Retail Management, Employee commitment, Leadership styles, Managerial level, Ordinal regression, Interaction effect. newlineThis empirical research study is a cause and effect study which aims to find out whichleadership style out of Transformational, Transactional and Passive avoidant Leadership is more suitable to enhance the level of Affective, Continuance and Normative commitment of the subordinate employees and also to assess the role of managerial level on this relationship, in context to organized retail industry of Lucknow, India. newlineAn empirical study was conducted on 500 employees from 50 retail outlets of Lucknow, India. The data set was divided into two levels of management: executive and operational. The executive level consists of 112 cases while the operational level comprises of 388 cases. Data was recorded on a 5-point likert scale and was divided into 3 sections, the demographics, the MLQ and the OCQ. To assess the managerial style The Multifactor Leadership questionnaire (MLQ 5X) was used. To assess the outcome variables; affective, continuance and normative commitment, organizational commitment questionnaire (OCQ) was used. Ordinal regression model in IBM SPSS was developed for statistical analysis. Interaction effects were used to assess the moderating role of managerial level. newlineThis study finds that while all three leadership styles TFLS,TSNL, PALS has a direct and positive effect on AC, CC, NC, Transformational leadership style has the greatest effect on employee s affective, continuance and normative commitment. It also finds that managerial level does not exhibit a moderating role on the direct relationship of the three leadership styles and the three types of employee commitment. newlineDue to limitation of resources and time the research population was limited to Lucknow city of India. Keeping the time constraint in view, a sample of only 500 respondents was tested. The same model can be applied to different geographical populations and results may be compared for variations if any. Also, instead of the 3 leadership styles used in the study, other leadership styles can also be tested for outcomes using the same model. newlineThis research study provides practical Leadership guidance for the managers of the Lucknow s retail organizations as to which leadership style is effective for enhancing employee commitment. It constructively adds to the existing literature on leadership and employee commitment, especially transformational leadership. Also, it provides an empirical framework and model for future researchers to extend this study to wider geographical areas and delve into studying the effects of other leadership styles on other employee outcomes. It serves as an empirical evidence that managerial levels do not significantly affect the leadership- commitment relationship. newlineWhile other researchers simply study the cause and effect relationship between leadership styles and various employee outcomes, this study also analyses the moderating role of managerial level on this relationship i.e. whether the change in managerial level calls for a change in leadership style as well. Moreover, the novelty of this research lies in its analysis approach. While most of the earlier similar research are based on collinearity evidences or linear or even multinomial regression models, this research paper exhibits the development and use of ordinal regression model to study the leadership style and employee commitment relationship and interaction effects to assess the moderating role of managerial level. newline