Relationships between leadership styles, follower needs, multidimensional work motivations and organizational commitment: A mediated model

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of the four leadership styles (i.e., transformational leadership, paternalistic leadership, task-oriented leadership and relationship-oriented leadership) on employees' multidimensional work motivations and organizational commitment and to reveal the mediating effets of psychological need satisfaction processes (i.e., satisfaction of emlployees' needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness) in the proposed relationships. Data were collected from 461 white-collar employees working in various sectors and analyzed by using Structural Equation Modeling. The findings revealed that TL and T-O leadership behaviors were important predictors of employees' autonomus, and controlled work motivations as well as amotivation via their effects on satisfaction of employees' needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. Employees' intrinsic motivation levels were found to be positively associated with their affective and normative commitment and employees' identified regulation levels were found to be positively associated with their affective commitment. Moreover, employees' introjected motivation levels were found to be positively associated with their normative commitment and employees' external regulation levels were found to be positively associated with their continuance commitment. Also, as expected, employees' amotivation was found to be negatively associated with their affective, normative, and continuance commitment. Additionally, TL and PL leaderhsip styles were found to be directly and positively associated with employees' affective and normative commitment. Finally, R-O leadership style was found to be the least effective leadership style in predicting the outcome variables. The findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications as well as suggestions for future research.