THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELATIONSHIP-ORIENTED LEADERSHIP, ORGANIZATIONAL EMOTIONAL MEMORY LEVEL AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

Abstract

Leadership in the business environment helps to establish and maintain effective relationships between employees by reducing the level of stress at work and increasing job satisfaction. Hence, it reduces absenteeism and employee turnover as well as improves performance. The relevant literature includes studies that examine the relationship between leadership, organizational memory level, and organizational commitment. However, there is no study discussing the relationship between relationship-oriented leadership, organizational emotional memory level and organizational commitment. This research paper is the extended version of a conference paper (in 2018) that it empirically tests the effect of relationship oriented leadership on organizational emotional memory level and organizational commitment. The research was carried out with a sample consisting of 320 participants from organizations in the service sector in Istanbul in 2018 by using a survey method. The result of the research showed that 1) relationship oriented leadership has no relationship with the level of organizational emotional memory level, 2) relationship-oriented leadership has negative relationship with organizational commitment, 3) organizational emotional memory level has a positive relationship with organizational commitment. Mainly, employees were reactive to a relationship-oriented leadership style both in terms of organizational commitment and organizational emotional memory level. This research has been applied to the employees of Turkey's three major durable goods companies. As a result of this study, the relationship found between relationship-oriented leadership and organizational commitment shows a negative relationship unlike the literature. The main reason for the difference is that relationship-oriented leadership does not fit well with the working styles of those working in the durable goods industry. Instead of developing communication with employees that ends up more time pressure on them, output-oriented leadership type is seemed to be more suitable for this sector. When approached with the relationship-oriented leadership type, it was observed that the employees were less attentive to their work (because they were not warned seriously enough) and as a result, their commitment to the organization decreased. If the sector researched in this study had been different, it has been predicted that a more positive relationship between organization commitment and relationship-oriented leadership could be obtained.