Effects of Sports Center Employees’ Self-Leadership on Organizational Commitment: Mediating Effects of Leader-Member Exchange

Abstract

Considering that the role of leadership is still essential for a corporate organization to grow and develop continuously, self-leadership based on a sense of ownership is emerging as the ideal leadership required of organizational members. However, despite the great efforts of academia in investigating the effectiveness of self-leadership in various industrial fields, prior literature on self-leadership in the context of sports center organizations seems to be limited. The objective of the present study was to examine the influence of sports center employees’ self-leadership on leader-member exchange (LMX) and organizational commitment and the mediation role of LMX in the relationship between self-leadership and organizational commitment. A total of 172 Korean sports center employees participated in the present study. The results indicated that sports center employees’ self-leadership significantly impacted LMX and organizational commitment, and LMX positively affected organizational commitment. Additionally, sports center employees’ LMX had an important partial mediation role in the relationship between self-leadership and organizational commitment. Consequently, the current study’s findings provide sports center organizations with practical implications for enhancing organizational effectiveness.