THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLE AND EMPLOYEES' COMMITMENT : A STUDY OF GHANA OIL PALM DEVELOPMENT COMPANY LIMITED.

ABSTRACT In today’s world, there is a lot of focus on the importance of leadership behavior and style to the operations of organizations and at the same time, organizations are struggling to attract and retain talented employees. Even though there are many factors that contribute to employee’s decision to either stay in an organization or not, the main aim of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between leadership style and skilled employees’ commitment. This research identified the leadership styles in Ghana Oil Palm Development Company Limited (G. O.P. D. C. Ltd) through ratings using the adapted Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, which was formulated from Bass and Avolio (1997), the Full Range Leadership Development Theory and rated the employees’ commitment using an adaptation of Meyer and Allen’s (1997) Three-Component Model of employee commitment. This was enhanced by using semi structured interview to explore the problem further. Eight leaders were rated high for transformational leadership behaviors, six transactional and one leader for laissez-faire. Their employee groups were identified with affective, normative and continuance commitments respectively. Other factors identified as contributing to the skilled employee’s decision to leave or remain in the organization included the stages of their working lives, perceived employment options and their sense of devotion to their organization and family commitments. Overall, findings from this study suggest that leadership behaviors do play important roles in determining commitment within an organization. However, the high turnover rate of skilled employees at GOPDC cannot be attributed only to the style of leadership in the organization. In conclusion, it can be said that leadership behaviours result in different levels of commitment among skilled employees. However, other factors also impact on the decision of skilled employees to either remain or leave an organization