Leadership styles and subordinate commitment: Role of hardiness in Malaysian Army / Mohd Nazri Madjan Abdul Rahman

• Main Author: Mohd Nazri Madjan , Abdul Rahman
• Format: Thesis
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: HD28 Management. Industrial Management
• Online Access: http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/13850/1/Mohd_Nazri.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/13850/2/Mohd_Nazri_Madjan.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/13850/

This study intends to investigate the level of organizational commitment among subordinates in the Malaysian Army’s (MA) combat unit, as influenced by their unit commander’s leadership styles. Additionally, this study also introduces the element of hardiness in exploring the mediating role between leadership styles and organizational commitment, thereby filling the research gap regarding leadership and commitment. The Three-Component Model (TCM) of organizational commitment theory, namely: affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment were employed together with the element of personality hardiness to examine the extent to which the variables were influenced by the soldier’s perception when measured using the Full Range Leadership Model (FRLM) vignettes experiment that consists of transformational, and transactional leadership styles. Building upon the Job Demand-Resources (JD-R) theory, the hypothesized relationships were tested through Experimental Vignette Methodology (EVM). In engaging the leadership vignette intervention, a pre-test and post-test approach were deployed to examine how much does transformational or transactional leadership vignettes influenced the military subordinates’ hardiness, and the TCM of organizational commitment. The SPSS version 25 was utilized to identify the significant mean differences between the two leadership styles vignette, and also to analyze the difference of the mean values for hardiness, and organizational commitment, as measured by the pre-test and post-test outcomes. Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), (SmartPLS 3) were also utilized to examine the outcome of the reflective structural model on the hypotheses testing derived from the post-test data generated by the leadership paper vignettes’ intervention. This study found that transformational leadership can significantly influence the subordinate’s normative commitment, but it can insignificantly influence their affective and continuance commitment. In reference to the second leadership style, it appears that transactional leadership had significantly influenced the subordinates’ affective and continuance commitment. However, it had an insignificant influence on the subordinates’ normative commitment. The hypotheses testing revealed that transformational leadership had positively influenced hardiness, while transactional leadership had insignificantly influenced the subordinates’ hardiness. With regard to the mediating role of hardiness, this study found that hardiness had significantly influenced all the TCM of organizational commitment. The hypotheses testing also showed that hardiness mediated the relationship between transformational leadership, and the all of the organizational commitment. In contrast, the result also showed that the relationship between transactional leadership, and the TCM of organizational commitment was not mediated by hardiness. This study contributes to the practical and contextual aspect of literature with regards to the research on hardiness, which is still lacking in studies, particularly those pursuing the element of hardiness in relation to leadership styles, and the TCM of organizational commitment within the context of the MA The current EVM study may be the first attempt that is examining leadership styles as an organizational resource that could influence the military subordinates’ hardiness as their personal resource, within JD-R theory. In summary, this study suggests that the unit commander’s transformational leadership styles are an essential element for preserving the military subordinate’s commitment level; it has a mediating role on their hardiness. For the purpose of ensuring that the current military force can evolve and transform to encompass a force that has high levels of work commitment and resilience, it is necessary that the soldier’s hardiness level be considered by the MA when formulating their training systems.