Group Leadership Climate and Individual Organizational Commitment

Abstract

Most research about the effects of leadership on employee work outcomes ignores the fact that the relationship between supervisor and employee is embedded within a group. In this article, we answer the questions what is the effect of group leadership climate strength, conceptualized as the variability in leadership climate within groups, on individual organizational commitment of employees, and how this adds to the effect of group leadership climate level, conceptualized as mean leadership climate within a group. Using data from 16,299 employees within 1,826 groups, we conducted multilevel analyses which showed that group leadership climate level and strength are related to individual organizational commitment after controlling for the influence of individual level leadership climate. In the discussion, the practical and scientific implications of these results are discussed.