Relationship between Leadership Style, Self Esteem and Organizational Commitment among Students from Research Universities in Malaysia

Abstract

Research showed that leadership styles could influence the organizational commitment of workers in work organization. Failure of leadership at work could cause undesirable impact on workers as well as organizations, such as affecting the efficiency and performance which could bring burden to the organization as a whole. This study aimed to observe the relationship between leadership styles, self esteem and organizational commitment among students who joined student organizations in five research universities in Malaysia. In this study, leadership styles were categorized into transformational leadership, transactional leadership and Laissez-Faire leadership. Organizational commitment was divided into three dimensions which are affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. Questionnaires were distributed through purposive sampling to one hundred and seven respondents from five research universities in Malaysia. Correlation analysis exposed that transformational leadership has a positive and significant relationship with self esteem and three dimensions of organizational commitment. Transactional leadership did not show a significant relationship with self esteem and organizational commitment. Laissez-Faire leadership showed a negative and significant relationship with self esteem and three dimensions of organizational commitment. These findings specify that leaders are encouraged to practice transformational leadership and avoid Laissez-Faire leadership in order to achieve organization aims.