Effect of Perceived Leadership Style and Emotional Intelligence on Organisational Commitment in Private Universities in Ogun State

Abstract

Universities in Nigeria are encumbered with serious challenges in the area of the organisational commitment of employees, ineffective leadership and low emotional intelligence, resulting in poor organisational outcomes such as low motivation and high turnover. In this study, investigation was carried out to find out the effect of perceived leadership style and emotional intelligence on organisational commitment of two private universities. Using a convenient sampling technique, 181 respondents participated in the study and two main hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis on SPSS version 20. The results indicated that though perceived leadership style has a statistically significant positive effect on organisational commitment, but of the three dimensions of leadership styles examined, only transformational leadership showed significant positive effect on organisational commitment with a p-value of .001 (p = < 0.05) and a beta value of .240. Both transactional leadership and laissez-faire leadership styles showed negative beta values (β =-.163; β = -.128 respectively) indicating a negative effect on organisational commitment. Emotional intelligence was discovered to have significantly positive effect on organisational commitment. Thus, it is recommended that more attention should be given to developing and exhibiting transformational leadership attributes in the private universities and also, emotional intelligence training should be regularly reinforced and given to employees of the educational organisations.