Abstract

The leadership styles and employees’ commitment are widely research topic explored around the globe in different contexts. Keeping in view this trend, the current study also “examined the impact of leadership” styles and employee commitment by collecting data from employees hailing from PESCO, Pakistan. The survey approach for data collection has been used by collecting the data from the workforces working in Peshawar electricity supply company to walk around “influence of leadership style on the employees’ commitment”. The current study sent out 255 questionnaires to bring together data from workers of the PESCO. The outcomes show that the leadership style significantly and positively affect employees’ commitment. The study provided significant results about the relationships among the research variables. Some recommendations have been emerged from the results to the policy makers and “future researchers to focus on the leadership” styles to get the desired results and keep the employees more committed and dedicated towards the concerned organizations.

Key Words

Leadership Styles, Employees Commitment Job Stress & PESCO

Introduction

The organizational commitment is an indicator of employees' higher level of performances. The literature reveals that employees’ commitment plays critical role in refining the effectiveness and performance of employees and organization as well (Mayer & Allen, 1997). In this regard, the leadership is one the dynamics that can distress commitment and performance of workforces. The employees’ emotional attachment to their organization is only due to values and the respect which the leaders provides to their employees (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch & Topolnytsky, 2002). In this regard, leadership and the dominant style which the leaders adapt are measured as vital determining factor towards commitment on part of employees. There are numerous models of organizational commitment but most prominent model was developed by considering commitment three level which are comprises continuous, affective, and normative (Ramchandran & Krishnan, 2010). The affective and emotional attachment to the respective organizations is called affective commitment. Similarly, feelings of obligations on part of employees towards their organizations is called continuous commitment. In same line, employee cost-benefit analysis that either to stay or leave is called as the normative commitment (Rehman, Aamer, Mahmood & Amir, 2014).

The dominant research on leadership styles and employees’ commitment provides the reasonable material about their relationship. The existing literature also provided suitable data regarding the job stress with its “mediating role in relationship” concerning the styles of leadership and the employees’ commitment (Apaka & Sefer, 2016). The “leadership styles and its influence” upon the effectiveness, commitment and performance of employees and the organization as well have constantly been argued and analyzed in the management spheres. The researchers who conducted their studies on leadership have introduced numerous theories and model. The later research also highlights the relationship of leadership and commitment in the contemporary era. The difference between transactional and transformational leadership is sure however not commonly limited. The literature reveals that the effective leadership may require both transactional and transformational styles to inspire, motivate and encourage their employees to attain the desired. Current study is an struggle to theoretically and empirically examine and examine the leadership and its effect on commitment of workforces with arbitrating role of job stress.

Problem Statement

The leadership is the most influential phenomenon which is solely responsible for many outcomes of the organizations likewise the commitment and performance. This study objects at exploring the effect of leadership styles on employees’ performance in the context of PESCO employees to obtain some valuable information and to validate the results as offered by various researchers thorough the existing research studies. 




Objectives of Study

? This study aims to examine the association and “effect of leadership styles” on employees’ commitment in the PESCO, Peshawar (main objective). 

? To examine the correlation “between leadership styles and the employees’ commitment” among the workforces in the context of PESCO (correlation).  

? To explore the impact of the “leadership styles and the” employees’ commitment among PESCO employees (regression).  




Research Hypothesis

H1: There is a positive correlation between the “leadership styles and employees’ commitment” (correlation analysis).

H2: The leadership styles have the significant impact on the employees’ commitment (regression analysis).




Research Gap

This study aimed at exploring the gap in the existing literature about the leadership styles and organizational commitment. The researcher highlighted the gap in the context that there seems lack of “research studies conducted on the” views of the PESCO employees on the variables under study. Therefore, the scholar selected the PESCO context carefully by exploring the research concepts/variables.  

Literature Review

By reviewing the transformational and value-based initiative builds as reciprocal develops, distinctive specialists built up the “Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire” (MLQ) to evaluate the diverse administration styles. In spite of the fact that builds of transformational administration model are not generally new and could be found underway of before the management scholars (Bartram & Casimir, 2006). The transformational authority is thought to be one of the initiative style that have caught numerous administration researchers' considerations over a quarter century. There are few styles of the initiative, such as, the totalitarian, free enterprise, bureaucratic, fair, participative, alluring, value-based, situational and transformational leadership (Bodla & Nawaz, 2010). Transformational leaders were by and large more exceedingly emphatically corresponded with their subordinates' fulfillment, additional exertion, viability and duty when contrasted and the value-based leaders and therefore depicted by various creators to have a high association with authority achievement (Bakar & Mahmood, 2014). Various reviews completed in a few settings “demonstrated that there is a positive connection” among administration and the employee’s dedication with regards to various associations.




Leadership Styles

The transactional and transformational leadership styles are varying edge is the practices in which "leaders and supporters help each other to progress to a more elevated amount of assurance and inspiration". Consumes recognized with the misfortune in parting between management and creativity and declared that the differences are in the practices and traits. The transformational administration is considered as a creativity “style that causes change” in social and individual’s contexts (Bass & Riggio, 2006). In its ideal edge, it makes positive and significant “change in the” followers with the factual objective of creating supporters into inventers. Instituted in its accurate edging, transformational creativity recovers the assurance, motivation and effecting of supporters through a variety of components (Reuvers, Engen, Vinkenburg & Wilson, 2008). These include interfacing the follower's sensitivity of self and character to the task and cumulative nature of the relationship, being good sample for supporters that provokes them, challenging followers to take more noteworthy possession “for their work and understanding” the shortcomings and qualities of groups, so leaders can regulate supporters to errands that advance their dedication and execution.




Transformational Leadership

The leader propels and changes supporters over her or his romanticized effect (before alluded to as appeal), moving inspiration, “scholarly incitement and individual thought”. Also, this leader “urges devotees to think of new and extraordinary approaches to challenge” the norm and to adjust the” earth to support being effective” (Ali & Mohamud, 2015). The individualized thought is how ample the leader takes care of each individual’s desires, drives about as a coach or counsellor to the follower and refrains in to followers’ needs and worries. The leader provides support and compassion, retains communication open and seats challenges before the followers. The scholarly incitement is how much the pioneer challenges presumptions, goes out on an appendage and needs adherents' thoughts (Fatma & Aini, 2015). Leaders’ with this style fortify and support imagination in their adherents. They create and support employees who think generously. The persuasive inspiration is how the leader clarifies a vision that is attractive and rousing to supporters. The leader with helpful stimulus challenge supporters with convey hopefulness and exclusive prospects about future aims and give meaning to the job that desires to be done (Mohamud, Abdulkadir, Ali, Ahmed & Mohamed, 2017). The glorified impact gives a good pattern to impart pride, high moral conduct and picks up trust and regard.




Transactional Leadership

The transactional authority essences on the skills that ensue between followers and leaders. These vocations permit leaders to realize their effecting aims, varnish vital tasks, “keep up the current hierarchical circumstance, spur supporters over legally binding assertion”, “coordinate conduct of devotees toward accomplishment of built up objectives, underline extraneous prizes”, concentrate on improve imposing ability and avoid redundant hazards (Emery, College, Barker & Fredonia, 2007). Thusly, value-based authority permits supporters to the content their own self-intrigue, emphasis on strong influential goals, limit at work atmosphere tension, and, perhaps, client benefit, stretched qualit

y, prolonged generation and reduced expenses. The transactional leader works over building clear erections where it is strong what is obligatory of their followers and the rewards that they acquire for pleasing after applications (Fenwick & Gayle, 2008). The punishments are not usually quantified but rather they are similarly certainly knowing and proper outlines of train are normally set up (Mohamud, Abdulkadir, Ali, Ahmed & Mohamed, 2017). The early phase of the transactional leadership is in arranging the agreement whereby subordinate is given advantages and gets expert over the subordinate.




Organizational Commitment

The affective commitment is the employees feeling with respect to emotions and the psychological attachment with the concerned organization. The employees show their utmost dedication when they show the psychological affiliation (Meyer & Allen, 1993). On the other hand, continuance commitment is dependent upon the analysis of cost-&-benefits in which the employees perceived the cost of staying and leaving by keeping in view their investment in the particular organizations. In the normative contents, the employees always feel the obligations to remain in the organization and show their efforts for the organizational uplift (Meyer & Allen, 1997). In this regard, the commitment plays a vital role with respect to all its dimensions in the credibility of the institutions. Thus, the organizational commitment is amalgam of three origins which includes as the confidence of value acceptance regarding the organizational objectives, the disposition to follow the benefit for the organization and the rigorous desire of organizational position maintenance (Muhammad, 2011). Therefore, commitment is categorized into three mechanisms like a longing “(affective), a need (continuance) and an obligation (normative)” (Haddadi & Ansari, 2015).

Research Methodology

The research design of current study is inferential in nature. Most of the “researcher on the same topics used the survey approach. In this regard, the researcher also selects the survey approach for the current study”. The population is actually the gathering of those “elements in which the researcher” is concerned and want to generalize the findings to the entire population by “collecting the data from the sample of the population”. To conduct the research study, both the “primary and secondary sources of data” collection have been used. For the secondary data, the scholar used the sources of existing literature while for the primary data collection, the scholar used the source of questionnaire. After collecting the responses, all the researchers use different tolls for the data analyses. 

The data analysis is “used to analyze the responses of the respondents” to reach the conclusion. At this stage, several questions arise which to be answered by the researcher. For the data analysis, the researchers always used recommended tools as already applied by different scholars to “find the answers of the research questions”. An adapted version of questionnaire has been used from the previous studies. To achieve more accurate results, the researcher carefully chosen the style of continuous scale. The “continuous scale uses scale from 1 to 7, where No. 7 represents “strongly agree” while No. 1 represents” “strongly disagree”. The validity of the instrument has been done by distributing the questionnaire among the most senior personnel of PESCO along with the senior researchers. Through “Cronbach's alpha, examination” of reliability concerning the questionnaire was done. Against four variables, the aggregate of 30 items were measured which provides the Cronbach Alpha value (0.917) which is quite satisfactory.

Data Analysis

This is the main section where the results obtained through statistical procedures through collected data has been presented. In this section, the “researcher presented the empirical results computed from the field study”. This section presents the results of statistical analysis of the data to examine the hypotheses as emerged “from the theoretical framework of the study”. The descriptive as well as the inferential analysis were used to examine the data and to reach the conclusion. 

 

Table 1. Cross-Tabulation Across Gender, Qualification & Domicile

Domicile			Qualification			Total
			Bachelor	Master	M. Phil
Local	Gender	Male	62	30	26	118
		Female	10	12	5	27
	Total		72	42	31	145
Non-local	Gender	Male	14	34	20	68
		Female	4	8	0	12
	Total		18	42	20	80

 

Table 2. Cross-Tabulation Across Gender, Experience & Domicile

Domicile			Experience				Total
			1-10	11-20	21-30	31-40
Local	Gender	Male	51	49	14	4	118
		Female	21	4	0	2	27
	Total		72	53	14	6	145
Non-local	Gender	Male	45	12	6	7	68
		Female	12	2	3	2	12
	Total		57	14	9	9	80

 

Table 3. Descriptive Statistics on the Research Variables

	N	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. Deviation
Transformational	225	3.33	6.44	5.1501	.78803
Transactional	225	2.80	6.60	5.0876	.89499
Commitment	225	2.30	6.80	5.3347	.83828
Valid N (List-wise)	225

 

Hypothesis # 1 Association between Predictors and Criterion Variable

 

Table 4. Table of Correlations

		Transformational	Transactional
Transformational Leadership	Pearson Correlation	1	.937**
	Sig. (2-tailed)		.000
	N	225	225
Transactional Leadership	Pearson Correlation	.937**	1
	Sig. (2-tailed)	.000
	N	225	225
Organizational Commitment	Pearson Correlation	.763**	.780**
	Sig. (2-tailed)	.000	.000
	N	225	225

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

 

The table above shows the analysis regarding the correlation (association) regarding independent, dependent and the mediating variables. It shows “that all the variables are highly and significantly associated” with one another. The “independent variables like transformational and transactional leadership styles” are significantly associated with dependent variable (employees’ commitment) (.763 with significant value of .000 and .780 with significant value of .000 respectively. Thus, from these analyses, it is “concluded that the hypothesis is accepted”.

 

Hypothesis # 2 Predictors have significant impact on criterion variable

 

Table 5. Model Summary

Model	R	R Square	Adjusted R Square	Std. Error of the Estimate	F	Sig.
1	.785a	.616	.613	.52170	178.171	.000a

 

Table 6. Coefficients of Regression

Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.
		B	Std. Error	Beta
1	(Constant)	1.353	.235		5.764	.000
	Transformational Leadership	.281	.127	.264	2.213	.028
	Transactional Leadership	.498	.112	.532	4.453	.000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional Leadership, Transformational Leadership

b. Dependent Variable: Organizational Commitment

 

As the mediation analysis is based upon certain conditions therefore to fulfill all these conditions, the researcher followed all the steps in the mediation analysis. The first step in the mediation analysis is to check the cause and effect relationship between the independent and the dependent variables. The regression analysis between these two variables as shown in the table that there is 62% change/variation in the dependent variable (employees’ commitment) is due to the independent variable (transformational and transactional leadership styles). Furthermore, the analysis shows that transactional leadership style is more significant with (.000) than the transformational leadership (.028). Hence, the first condition for mediation is therefore accepted and substantiated. Therefore, both correlation and regression provides the significant information in deciding the relationships between the leadership styles and employees’ commitment in the context of PESCO.  

Discussion and Conclusion

In the comparative vein, the topic of stress is increasing more consideration now than before from the academic world due to a great extent to the requesting and changing nature of work as of late. The specialists were roused by the individual contrast calculate push involvement and accordingly looked to decide the distinctions in stress and responsibility from the point of view of sexual orientation, administrative status and hierarchical residency (Hayward, Goss & Tolmay, 2002). Distinction in the work setting of members is by all accounts a central point in sex contrasts in the experience of stress. Also, this review made an underlying endeavor to investigate the connection amongst authority and representatives' impression of work stress (Antonakis, Avolio & Sivaramaniam, 2003). As indicated by our outcomes, representatives will be less worried at work when their pioneers show normatively suitable direct. Notwithstanding showing concern, pioneers can likewise help representatives diminish work worry by introducing reasonable treatment, setting up two-way correspondence and giving adequate employment self-rule (Cary, Dew & Driscoll, 2003). Distinguishing moral initiative as a viable solution for work stretch, we add to the work push writings.

In this review, referent power has the most elevated negative connection with the three ward factors: work push, work weight and saw absence of support from the concerned initiative. Subordinates' employment stress can be diminished on the off chance that they see their pioneers as change operator who are great good examples, who can make and understandable a reasonable vision for an association, who engage subordinates to accomplish at higher measures, who act in ways that make others need to trust them, and who offer intending to authoritative life (Kehoe & Wright, 2012; Rehman, Aamer, Mahmood & Amir, 2012). This thus may prompt higher administrative and authoritative adequacy. Then again, depending on for the most part positional power bases, for example, coercive or true blue forces may expand subordinate's occupation worry in the association. Positional power bases may not give craved outcomes in associations to various reasons. Some of these are inconsistent execution evaluation frameworks, subjectively controlled prizes, and poor administrative abilities in indicating workers the compensation for-execution interface. In spite of the fact that the present review saw the effect of weight on employment execution, the huge part of strong administration in adapting to stretch and expanding work execution was likewise highlighted (Bakar & Mahmood, 2014; Nazirah, Kamal & Seri, 2015; Ali & Mohamud, 2015).

The review closes outcomes demonstrated that administration style is decidedly and altogether influenced to hierarchical responsibility. It suggests if bosses consider, spur, help to tackle issues and battle welfare for their subordinates, it can make positive hierarchical duty and further advance occupation execution. In addition, managers can simply increment hierarchical duty by giving prizes to actuate representatives to buckle down. The hierarchical duty positively affects work stretch. It uncovers that workers will stay and commit themselves to fulfilling work destinations since they have similar qualities and objectives inside the association. The authority style is emphatically and altogether influenced to employment stretch. It implies that bosses' contemplations or inspirations can bring about representatives' certain inclination so their employment execution will emerge. The occupation stretch holds a halfway interceding impact between the relationship of initiative style and workers’ responsibility. It signalizes that bosses need to see the association and impact of authoritative responsibility to workers.

Recommendations

? An association can give preparing projects to develop authority gifts of its representatives. Particularly, these projects can be planned as per subordinates' identity keeping in mind the end goal to make a more powerful pioneer. 

? Leaders need to impart hierarchical values and occupation destinations with subordinates so they can yield inspirations to have better employment execution. 

? Leaders ought to change authority style contingent upon various representatives and give legitimate authoritative responsibility to subordinates for them to finish work targets successfully and to diminish the worry among their representatives.

? In perspective of this, a longitudinal review is recommended to gage the potential changes that may happen extra minutes between administration practices, representatives' dedication and the occupation push.

? The study is helpful in contributing valuable information to the existing data base of knowledge about leadership styles, employees’ job stress and level of commitment. This study empirically tested the said variables in specified context by providing statistical validation of the research hypothesis emerged from the theoretical framework.  

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