Abstract

Leadership continues to be one of the major factors determining job commitment of employees despite the fact that its efficiency may differ depending on organizational setting. Nevertheless, past empirical studies examining the influence of leadership styles on worker’ job commitment among Nigerian manufacturing organizations have paid little attention to investigating the role of organizational context in explaining differences in this relationship. This paper, therefore, sought to establish whether organizational context is an explanation for differences in the relationship between leadership styles and job commitment among employees of selected Nigerian manufacturing firms. Quantitative research design was employed based on data collected from 250 employees of Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company Ltd. and Jezco Plastics Ltd. Structured questionnaire was employed to collect data while descriptive statistics, multiple regression, comparative analysis and hierarchical regression analyses were applied to analyze data. It was found that transformational and democratic leadership styles increased job commitment of employees in both firms, but transactional leadership style was significant only in Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company Ltd. Autocratic and laissezfaire leadership styles failed to make significant contribution to job commitment of employees in both firms. Though the strength of the leadership-commitment linkage was varied among the two companies, there was no significant moderating effect of organizational context on the linkage. It is concluded that good leadership, especially transformational and democratic leadership, continues to be a major factor in ensuring job commitment of employees in similar organizational contexts. The paper suggests that managers need to develop strong participative and transformational leadership styles and create good organizational contexts