Relationships between leadership style and organizational commitment: The moderating role of the system of work

Abstract

The article fills a crucial gap in the literature in the area of relationships between leadership style and organizational commitment. In spite of the actuality of the theoretical nature and growing practical importance of the issue, no attempt has been made to examine the relationship in the context of its moderation by the work system in light of the widespread increase in remote working in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and post-Covid digitalization of the working environment by now. As a result, the key purpose of the paper is to investigate the moderating role of the work system in the relationship between leadership style and organizational commitment. The work system is understood as remote or onsite working. The empirical research is based on the survey done for Poland in the year 2022. The obtained primary data were analyzed within the Structural Equation Model (SEM) analytical framework. The main findings prove that transactional leadership has a greater impact on the organizational commitment of remote workers, while transformational leadership has a stronger impact on the organizational commitment of employees who work onsite. Therefore, from the practical perspective, organizations can increase the organizational commitment of their employees by adopting appropriate leadership behaviors by leaders. These behaviors should be adapted to the work system, depending on whether employees work remotely or on-site. Based on these results, organizations can better design working conditions contributing to greater employee commitment, which in turn will translate into organizational performance.