Abstract:
This study presented “The Effect of Leadership Styles on Employees’ Commitment in ECC,
Bahirdar branch”. The general objective of the study was to investigate the effect of leadership
styles of branch managers on employee’s organizational commitment in ECC Bahir Dar branch.
The study used descriptive and explanatory research design with mixed research approach and
also used both Primary and secondary Data. There were 665 managerial and none managerial
employees in ECC Bahirdar branch and Data for the study was collected from 242 employees
selected by simple random sampling technique using survey questionnaire and interview with
twenty managers of ECC, Bahirdar branch which were selected for the study. The study was
used Statistical Packages for Social Sciences version 20 and by using this SPSS Both
descriptive and inferential analyses were applied in order to analyze the data collected from
structured questionnaires. The results showed that the three dimensions of leadership styles
(transformational, transactional and laissez-faire) were applied in study area, however
transformational leadership was usually applied in the study customs. Furthermore, Employees
commitment (affective, normative and continuance) was at the moderate level. The result of
correlation analysis showed that the three leadership styles had positive and significant
relationship with employees’ organizational commitment. Moreover, the result of regression
analysis showed that transformational, transactional and laissez-faire had statistical significant
effect on employees’ organizational commitment at 5% of significance level. It was concluding
that all the leadership styles have an effect on employee’s commitment in addition; the value of
R²of overall employees’ commitment showed that 60.4% variance in employees’ organizational
commitment can be explained by the predictors’ namely laissez-faire, transformational, and
transactional leadership styles. Beside to this the result showed that transformational leadership
style had highest contribution in predicting employees’ organizational commitment. Finally, this
study recommended that the study customs managers should pay more consideration to using
transformational leadership style whereas apply different styles in different condition.
