The relationship between authentic leadership and organisational commitment

Abstract

The aim of this quantitative study was to determine the relationship between authentic leadership (AL) and organisational commitment (OC) in a State hospital in South Africa. In this study AL was measured by means of the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) while OC was measured by the Organisational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ). The self-report paper-and-pencil questionnaires were administered to a convenience sample of 222 participants in a State hospital in South Africa. The ALQ produced a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.815, while the OCQ produced a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.891, both of which were considered adequate for the purpose of the current study. Results indicated that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between Overall AL and Overall OC (r = 0.19, p ≤ 0.05). Results also indicated a statistical significant positive correlation between Overall AL and the three OC dimensions, namely Affective Commitment (r = 0.12, p ≤ .05), Continuance Commitment (r = 0.13, p ≤ .05) and Normative Commitment (r = 0.20; p ≤ .05). All the correlation coefficients obtained, although statistically significant at the 0.05 level, were of small practical effect, ranging from a low of 0.12 to a high of 0.20. These small correlations indicate that the relationships between the variables were weak, despite being statistically significant. The results of the regression analysis conducted indicated that AL accounted for a statistically significant amount of variance of Overall OC (adjusted r2 = 0.03, F (1.218) = 8.38, p ≤ 0.05), and of one of its three dimensions, namely Normative Commitment (adjusted r2 = 0.04, F (1.218) = 9.52, ρ ≤ 0.05). However, AL was unable to significantly predict the two dimensions of Continuance Commitment and Affective Commitment. Although two of the regression scores obtained in this study were statistically significant, the amount of variance they explained was extremely small, ranging from a low of 3% to a high of 4%. These results indicate that AL can predict the Overall OC and the Normative Commitment of a sample of participants in a State Hospital in South Africa. Limitations of the empirical study were the small sample size that was used in this study (n = 222), and the fact that the study was conducted in a single State Hospital, making the generalisation of results to other State or Private Hospitals in South Africa problematic. It was also recommended that due to the importance of AL as a contemporary approach to leadership, it should be studied further to determine its relationship with other organisational variables besides OC.