Transformational leadership & organizational committment

ABSTRACT

Transformational Leadership has always been regarded as an important criterion for leading an organization by many leaders of today’s era. This style of leadership has widely gained in a lot of interest by a numerous researchers as it brings about the four important aspect of it, i.e. inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration, Idealized influence (Bass 1985 ). In this study work Transformational leadership has been related to organizational commitment. This study aims to identify the relationship between transformational type of leadership and organizational commitment, how a transformational leader influences the employees’ commitment in the organization.

Keywords: Organizational commitment, Transfromational leadership.

INTRODUCTION
Transformational leadership has been defined here as the ability of the leader or the superior to get their followers work or perform beyond their self significance. Research in Transformational leadership in association with organizational commitment has been extensively carried out but still there is a lack of literature in Indian context. This study thus focuses on the influential aspect of the two variables. Transformational leadership and organizational commitment has been defined differently by different researchers. In order to broaden our views, few of the definitions are provided. Transformational leadership is defined in terms of the leader’s effect on followers; employees feel trust, admiration, loyalty, and respect toward the leader, and are motivated to do more than they originally expected to do (Yukl, 1997). Transformational leaders attend to followers’ needs, provide support to followers, act as mentors or coaches to followers, listen to followers’ concerns, and foster a supportive climate for individual growth (Avolio, 1999;
Bass, 1998). According to Mowday et al. (1979), organizational commitment entails three factors: a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values, a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization, and a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization. Transformational leaders influences each component of organizational commitment in a different way, the current study portrays that.

DIMENSIONS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
As we have already stated, Transformational leadership is taking the followers beyond their self interest, in the literature that explained the dimensions of Transformational leadership are provided here.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Bass (1990) established four primary determinants that constitute transformationalr
Leadership: (1) Idealized influence, (2) Inspirational motivation, (3) Intellectual stimulation and (4) Individualized consideration.
Idealized influence:
This characteristic of the leader brings out the ability to influence the thoughts of the followers by helping them discover high level of self-confidence with in themselves.
Inspirational motivation:
Through this dimension the leader tries to inspire the followers by making the followers aware about the mission of the organization and thus indirectly enhancing the commitment of the employees.
Intellectual stimulation:
Through this the leader tries to make the followers aware about the problem in the organization and encourages them to bring about the decisions needed to face that problem through a new perspective.
Individualized consideration:
In this the leaders provide support and encouragement by giving the followers special consideration and importance.

ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT
Organizational commitment is nothing but the emotional attachment of the employee towards his organization. It consists of the following dimensions
Meyer & Allen (1997); established the following three important dimensions of organizational commitment as Affective, Continuance, and Normative commitment.
Affective commitment:
It is defined as a positive sense of identification of the employee with the organization (saroughi & Ahmad, 1996).
Normative commitment:
“Commitment on the basis of sense of duties towards the organization, which emphasizes commitment of the person to organization and its management”
Continuance commitment:
Employees with strong continuance commitment will remain in the organization because they need organization.

CONCLUSION AND CHALLENGE
With the increasing competition today, there is an important need of the hour that leaders transform themselves according to the upcoming era of globalization. Many researchers have proved that organizational commitment link positively with the transformational style of leadership more than that of the other leadership styles and it’s also been shown that organizational commitment is higher in those followers who are encouraged by their leaders to participate in decision making procedures (ibid).But still more studies may be conducted in Indian context focusing on which component of transformational leadership influence more of organizational commitment.
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