The Mediating Effect of Communication on the Relationship Between Leadership Style and Employee Commitment

Introduction

This study investigates the relationship between leadership style, and employees’ commitment among Dubai government servants. This chapter provides the background of the study and places the basis of its organizational outline. For a long time, leadership was defined as achieving results through people. This implies seeing people as resources for results. Then, leadership came to be seen as the ability to influence the behaviour of other people, whether or not there is a hierarchical relationship (Zhou, & George, 2003). Leadership is the process of persuasion, for example, through which an individual, or leadership teams, induce a group to devote themselves to goals championed by the leader, or shared by the leader and his followers (Yang, F.H. et al. 2011). These definitions are not unconnected; all have their concepts defects put differently, but that leads us to have a single conclusion about leadership and what it is to be a leader. To be able to lead is not to exercise power over people, but to make them feel the will to follow the decisions and execute them, just as the leader must receive from his collaborators suggestions and opinions for improvement, and also execute them (Yang, F.H. et al.2011).

Problem Statement

The proposed study aims to identify the relationship between the effects of leadership styles and employees’ commitment. Leadership and commitment studies are recent in the UAE, and we still need new studies that can help leaders understand what best practices and styles are to increase employees’ commitment. The growing competition has driven organizations in a quest to improve efficiency and commitment. In this new reality, Dubai Immigration Department needs leaders who collaborate to increase the commitment of collaborators, since the organizational commitment leads to the improvement of productivity and competitiveness.

Literature Review

The literature review is one of the essential phases in a research process, since it allows the researcher to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework (in which the hypotheses can be developed and tested) and to obtain a greater objectivity in the definition of the problem, avoiding the risk of reinventing the wheel. Treating a question very similar to that of another author does not necessarily mean repeating our work. The key is to be well aware of the methodologies and techniques adopted so that, with regard to the specific issue, one can contribute with added value (Sekaran, 2003).

The initial review, therefore, is essential to know the current state of knowledge about the subject, and the researcher can then state his research question, taking into account what has already been done (Sekaran, 2003). In this perspective, starting from the selected topic, framed in the organizational context of the leadership style, employees’ commitment and organizational performance, the literature review for the dissertation focuses on the topics of transformational leadership style, employees’ commitment and organizational performance.

Research Methodology

Research methods and methodology can be viewed in terms of methods as being some of the ingredients of research, whilst methodology provides the reasons for using a particular research recipe (Bryman, 2012; Bryman and Bell, 2012). Similarly, research methodology specifies the approach used by the researcher in the collection of data upon which inferences, interpretations, and predictions.

the research method that is employed to determine the relationship between leadership style, employees’ commitment and organizational performance, communication as mediator in UAE public organization. For this, it includes research processes like research design process, sampling design process, instrument development process, data analysis process etc.

The exploratory research focuses comparative report of practiced or used measures among immigration department in Dubai allied to the objectives of exploring the impact and significance it can contribute in the sustainability of the immigration department and implementation of leadership style. To achieve overall goals, objectives and measure researcher’s hypotheses, the study incorporates collected data and relevant related literatures and researches to support significance of the research topic. Researcher employs appropriate research instruments to collect data required for the study. The research design includes structured set of survey questionnaire to be distributed among Dubai immigration department.

Overview of Conceptual Framework

The theme leadership becomes increasingly strategic for organizations, because it is important to know the profile that makes the leader capable of generating greater commitment in their followers. Organizations need to seek competitive advantage in their business environments and we can assume that leaders play a key role in the organizational commitment of their leaders, which can ultimately contribute to the generation of competitive advantages for the organization (Yang, et al, 2011; Mathieu, John, Zajac & Dennis, 1999).

An appropriate leadership style can promote better levels of commitment to an organization's employees and motivate those employees to stay in the organization. Because commitment is performance-related (Allen & Meyer, 1990), organizations are interested in research that can help their leaders improve the level of commitment of their employees. The decision to focus this research on the communication as a mediator of leadership to enhance employees’ commitment at DID is driven by the increased demand for leadership efficient communication that is in contrast to the shortage of these well-qualified leadership in the job market.

Instruments (Questionnaire)

The questionnaire contains of four sections: section A, B, C, and D. section A is about the demographic information of the respondents including gender, age, educational qualification, position etc. Section B is about transformational leadership (Individualized Consideration, Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation, and Idealized Influence), Transactional leadership (Contingent Reward, Exception Management (Active), Exception Management (Passive)) and Laissez-Faire. Section C is about the Communicational Effectiveness and section D is about the Employee Commitment. The last section contains some open-ended questions in order to give respondents time to rapid themselves and help the researcher obtain appropriate and valuable knowledge on the currents condition of leadership style and challenges it faces which obstructs its positive implementation in immigration department in Dubai.

Data Analysis & Result

To analyse the data, both the descriptive and inferential statistics were adopted. Descriptive statistics analysis, including frequency, mean and standard deviation were performed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software to describe the profile of the respondent (Huck, 2012; Zikmund & Babin, 2006).

Next, inferential statistical analysis, specifically Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), was carried out to test the research hypotheses (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007) that have been proposed SEM was chosen over other statistical analysis techniques due to its applicability to test a comprehensive and complex model. That is, SEM not only test model fit reliability and validity, but also test direct and indirect relationship simultaneously (Garson, 2012a). In addition, SEM works with a minimum measurement error as it is reduced using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and provides a better model visualization (Garson, 2012a).

A complete structural equation model (SEM) was made up of two sub-models i.e. the measurement model and the structural model Instead of testing measurement and structural models simultaneously (single-stage approach), this research performed SEM using two-stage approach as it is widely used in marketing research (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988; Garson, 2012a; Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2010; Kline, 2011). Following the suggestion, this research first validated the measurement model using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) before testing the proposed structural model.

Conclusion

The study results concluded with insight findings which study intended to explore. According to empirical studies and literature review show that there is significate relationship between Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership and Laissez- faire. The conclusions to date three component as group to have positive result by enhancing employee commitment.

References