Participative Leadership And Organisational Commitment: Participative Leadership and Organisational Commitment among South African Bank Clerks

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between participative leadership and organisational commitment among bank clerks. The data was collected from a sample of 70 bank clerks in Alice and King William’s Town, using a self-designed biographical and occupational data questionnaire; a participative leadership questionnaire adopted from Sagie, Zaidman & Amichai-Humburger (2002); and Mowday, Steers, and Porter’s (1979) organisational commitment questionnaire. Participative leadership was measured as a unitary concept while organisational commitment was measured in the following four ways: as an acceptance of the organisation’s values and goals (values); as loyalty to the organisation (loyalty); as preparedness to expend extra effort for the organisation’s benefit (effort); and as a combination of the three component scores (total oc). For the total sample, participative leadership was found to be significantly positively correlated with total oc, and with effort. For males only, it was found to be significantly positively correlated with total oc; and for females only, it was significantly positively correlated with effort.