Introduction
This study’s problem is as follows: in the Bahamian private sector, some organizations’ poor leadership and a lack of empowerment affects employees’ commitment to them. Top-down, command-and-control leadership styles adopted by some organizational leaders frequently negatively affect workers and lead to tension between the sides. Employers are to encourage the adoption of appropriate leadership styles to reduce low performance and high turnover rates, as well as maximize organizational effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to determine which management leadership style — transactional, transformational, or servant — promotes more empowerment and employee commitment.
Literature Review
Literature review explores the views of a number of scholars on different leadership styles, empowerment, and organizational commitment. Transactional leaders work within sets of organizational boundaries, while transformational leaders are more future-oriented (Asgari et al., 2020; Rehman et al., 2018). Servant leaders are selfless in terms of helping organizations serve the community and society (Lapointe & Vandenberghe, 2018; Nauman et al., 2022). Empowerment is an increase in task motivation and self-determination that leads to job satisfaction (Boddy, 2017; Han et al., 2016; Kim & Shin, 2019; Kundu et al., 2021; Mufti et al., 2017; Newman et al., 2017). Organizational commitment is the willingness to work towards achieving the organization’s goals and sharing its values (Abasilim et al., 2018; Acharya & Dasbiswas, 2017; Ahmad et al., 2016; Byza et al., 2019; Durgapal, 2015; Kiker et al., 2019; Long et al., 2016; Meixner & Pospisil, 2021; Pradhan et al., 2015). These definitions are the foundations for understanding what the paper is about.
Methodology & Population
To examine whether there were links between leadership style, empowerment and organizational commitment, and demographic variables, both a qualitative and quantitative approach were employed. The target population were entry-level and mid-level part-time or full-time employees of seven large companies located at the Mall at Marathon in Nassau, the Bahamas. Qualitative method included a survey the responses to which were cross-tabulated with recipients’ demographic characteristics. Quantitative method included a ‘on a scale from 1 to 10’ survey the responses to which were analyzed using a one sample t-test.
Conclusion
The results indicated that, when it comes to the private sector in the Bahamas, the leadership style of managers considered mean by their employees did not differ from an above average median leadership style. When it comes to all three types of leadership, each of them was associated with feeling empowered and being committed to the organization. However, employees were a bit more committed when governed by leaders employing servant leadership style.
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