An empirical analysis of leadership, job satisfaction and organizational commitment : a study of community hospitals in central Thailand

Abstract

In order to deliver prompt responses and quality service in a cost-effective manner, organizational commitment has been perceived as a major driving force which reveals employees’ willingness and contribution to goal attainment, especially in light of the tumultuous settings of globalization. Organizational commitment is a concept that assumes a predominant role in human resource management. The concept can be described as an attitude or a force that binds employees with organizations. Employees are considered committed if they associate themselves with their organizations and devote a great deal of effort to pursuing the organization’s mission. By being committed, they remain motivated and dedicated to achieving predefined goals. Organizational commitment consequently has remained a topic of interest in public administration, management and organizational behavior research. This research aims to identify the causal relationships among leadership styles, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, and to answer the research questions. The objectives laid down for the research conduct were: 1) to explore the relationships among leadership styles, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, and 2) to provide policy recommendations for enhancing organizational commitment within the context of community hospitals in Thailand. In order to achieve these objectives, the concepts of organizational commitment, leadership styles, and job satisfaction were integrated into the proposed research model. The styles of leadership explored here are transformational, transactional, servant, and laissez-faire leadership. In order to eliminate the possibility of intervening variables, the present study also takes into account the characteristics which, according to previous literature, have been revealed to have an impact on organizational commitment. These include years of service, which refers to the number of years one works in his/her current organization, and limitation of career alternatives, which is the perception of personal career alternatives in relation to others. These are brought into the analysis as control variables. The present study relies on a non-probability research design, in which the entire population of 139 community hospitals in central Thailand represents the unit of analysis at the organizational level. With 2 hospitals involved in questionnaire pretesting, the number of hospitals examined in the survey remained at 137. The quantitative analysis method was used employing three main statistical techniques: factor analysis, Pearson correlation, and regression in order to enhance the understanding of these research findings. The statistical results of the research indicate a high correlation between transformational and servant leadership in accordance with the literature, supporting the largely overlapping attributes of the two concepts. Since servant leadership was reviewed to extend transformational elements, it was selected for further analysis of the relationships among leadership styles, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The relationship explored in the path model was of two types. The first is a direct relationship, examining how the variables in consideration influence organizational commitment. Servant leadership, transactional leadership, laissez-faire leadership, years of service, and job satisfaction positively and significantly affected commitment. Only limitation of alternatives did not have an impact. Job satisfaction exerted the highest degree of direct influence, while the least was attributed to transactional leadership. Second, there was an indirect relationship. Only two variables, including servant leadership and limitation of alternatives, positively and significantly affected commitment through job satisfaction. Transactional leadership, laissez-faire leadership, and years of service did not have an indirect impact. A servant leadership style produced a much greater influence on job satisfaction than limitation of alternatives did. To summarize, all variables had an effect on commitment. Most of them had only a direct influence. In terms of total causal relationships, servant leadership yielded the highest effect, suggesting that servant as well as transformational styles brought about commitment among employees. Job satisfaction produced the second highest effect based on its direct relationship with commitment. All in all, the researcher examines organizational commitment in a healthrelated context, addresses the problems of public and non-western organizations and identifies the leadership styles that help foster organizational commitment in community hospitals in central Thailand.