International Journal of Organizational Leadership

Abstract

The current study tests an integrative model that considers the plausible effects of transformational and passive-avoidant leadership styles on employees’ affective, normative, and continuance commitment to the organization. While leadership styles are treated as predictors of commitment, perceived stress is treated as a mediating factor in understanding the underlying mechanism of commitment. Data were collected from 232 white and blue-collar employees working at regional divisions of a privatized organization, monitoring Turkey’s electricity distribution services. The hypothesized mediation model was tested using structural equation modeling. Using the bootstrapping method, the indirect effects of both transformational leadership and passive-avoidant leadership on affective and normative commitment via perceived stress were found to be significant. However, contrary to the expectations, the mediating effects of perceived stress were found to be insignificant for relations between transformational leadership and continuance commitment and between passive-avoidant leadership and continuance commitment. The overall results suggest that employees tend to feel less tension and stress and thus ultimately become more affectively and normatively committed to the organizations when the supervisors exhibit transformational leadership behaviors. Passive-avoidant leadership behaviors, on the other hand, act as distal predictors of affective and normative commitment via perceived stress. By enacting passively and showing ignorance to subordinates' needs, passive leaders seem to intensify workplace stressors for followers.