The study of leadership styles and organizational commitment among education officers at the Education Department in Jambi, Indonesia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perception of staff on leadership styles practiced by Head of Department at the Education Department in Jambi, Indonesia. This study also investigates staff’s perceptions of their organizational commitment at the Education Department in Jambi, Indonesia. The researcher used the Leadership Behaviour Description Questionnaire-Form XII (LBDQ-XII) to measure initiating structure and consideration leadership behaviour. Meyer and Allen’s (1997) Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) was used to measure affective, continuance and normative commitment, and also used interviewing for additional data. Participants in the study included 96 staff, who worked for the Education Department. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 17.0 as the statistical software programme was used to perform all procedures. The findings of this study revealed that higher and dominant consideration than initiating structure practiced by Head of Education Department. Meanwhile, staff exhibited their higher affective commitment than continuance and normative commitment. The findings also show there is no pattern of relationship between leadership styles, three types of organizational commitment with six demographic attributes. The last findings revealed that leadership styles had positive statistically significant (t < .05) correlations with the three types of organizational commitment at the Education Department in Jambi, Indonesia.