Organizational commitment in Taiwan and its relationship to transformational leadership

The purpose of this research was to establish whether organizational commitment, as measured by the organizational commitment questionnaire, and transformational leadership theory, as measured by the multifactor leadership questionnaire are valid concepts and instruments for use in Taiwan. The results support the hypotheses tested in this study that they are valid for use in a Chinese culture. The second purpose of this research was to examine the relationship of managerial transformational and transactional leadership behaviors to employee organizational commitment. The results show that the influence of both transformational and transactional leadership on organizational commitment is positive. This finding supported the hypotheses concerning the impact of transformational leadership but did not support the hypotheses relating to the expected negative influence of transactional leadership. While transformational leadership had the greater positive impact on commitment, a positive impact of transactional leadership was also found although one of the two factors of transactional leadership was not sufficiently large to indicate a statistically significant relationship. The results indicate that leadership is a key component of employee organizational commitment and that the instruments are available to measure both leadership and commitment in Taiwan and that organizational commitment by employees can be enhanced by effective and appropriate leadership styles.