Does manager behavior influence knowledge worker job satisfaction and organizational commitment attitudes? A validation of Kouzes and Posner's transformational leadership theory

Job satisfaction and organizational commitment are two important organizational job attitudes. These job attitudes have been associated with knowledge-worker retention, intrinsic motivation, improved customer relations and improved performance, as well as with decreased incidences of burnout and counterproductive behaviors. Often engineers who transition into management overlook or undervalue the effect that behavior has on employee attitudes and thus productivity. Attitudes determine if the employee is going to exhibit behavior conducive to achieving high levels of performance above and beyond the minimum required for employment. The goal of this research was to provide empirical evidence that job satisfaction and organizational commitment job attitudes increased when managers practiced the five transformational leadership behaviors identified by Kouzes and Posner (1987; 1995; 1997).; The leadership behaviors that truly influenced job satisfaction and organizational commitment were identified using multiple regression, stepwise regression, and simple linear regression analyses. The nonparametric technique, Rank Transformation Regression, was used when the normality assumption of multiple regression was not valid.; The conclusion of this research was that employees reported higher levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment when managers consistently practiced the five transformational leadership behaviors. This research also found a positive correlation between global job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The implications of the findings for engineers who transition into management are that transformational leadership behavior on the part of the manager appears to influence job satisfaction and organizational commitment.