Further study on employee commitment to change by exploring the relationship between HR practices and commitment to change in three health service organizations in Ireland. They found that, transactional leadership had a negative impact on affective commitment to change, This suggests that transactional leaders are less effective in promoting employee commitment in a change context and that employee perceptions that managers display more transformational rather than transactional leadership are positively associated with the perceptions of fairness, trust and job security implicit in the psychological contract. However, no relationship was found between transformational leadership and commitment to change. This is perhaps surprising given that the literature indicates that transformational leadership is associated with change situations Edel Conway and Kathy Monks (2008). While, this study predicated transformational leadership have positive relationship with employee commitment to change, and transactional leadership proposed as having negative relationship with employee commitment to change. Therefore, there is a good deal of evidence that the quality of leadership is important during major organizational change (Kiffen-Petersen and Cordery, 2003) as well as after change in order to make the change successful and enhance the organization performance.
Parish et al 2007 seek to propose and test a model that delineates antecedents and consequences of affective, normative, and continuance commitment to organizational change. The data were collected via online survey from employees working in a large not-for-proï¬t organization. They found that all antecedents ( ï¬te with vision, employee-manager relationship quality, job motivation, and role autonomy ) influence commitment to change, and they noted that, affective commitment, which in turn influences employee perceptions about improved performance, implementation success, and individual learning regarding the change, had the greatest impact. They recommended for further research in this field, other antecedents to commitment to change could include like risk acceptance, organizational culture, and/or leadership style. With respect to the previous study, the ambiguity of the gap between the lectures of leadership style and commitment to change and organizational culture still existed. Therefore, this study attempt to respond to the call by examining the relationship between the leadership style and employee commitment to change without negligent the position of the organizational culture, which is playing major role by moderating the relationship among the leadership style and employee commitment to change.
Herold, et al (2008) USA investigated the relationship between transformational and change leadership and employee commitment to change initiative. They conducted the research with survey 343 employees in (30) organizations. They found that, Transformational leadership was more strongly related to followers' change commitment than change-specific leadership practices, and For leaders who were not viewed as transformational, and good change-management practices were found to be associated with higher levels of change commitment. Furthermore, employee commitment to a change has been identified as an important aspect of behavioral intentions to support the change (Fedor, Caldwell, & Herold, 2006; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002), and various aspects of employee commitment have been linked to transformational leadership (Bass & Riggio, 2006).
Although research has demonstrated the positive relationship between the extent of transformational leadership and employees' commitment to the organization (e.g., Bass & Riggio, 2006; Koh, Steers, & Terborg, 1995) and to the leader (e.g., Kark & Shamir, 2002), there has not been a great deal of research evidence concerning the relationship between transformational leadership and individuals' commitment to a specific change effort (Herold, et al 2008). Burke (2002), in addressing the question of whether leadership matters for organizational change, has noted "what has not been as clear from the literature is the impact of leadership on organization change" (p.241). He concluded that "it seems reasonable to assume, nevertheless, that because there is mounting evidence that leaders affect organizational performance in general, and surely they have an impact on organizational change in particular" (p. 241). Support for this expectation can be found in Groves's (2005) research on charismatic leadership. His results point to a significant relationship between followers' ratings of the leader's level of charisma and their general openness to organizational change.
Furthermore, Huen YU, et al (2002) examines the effect of transformational leadership practices on teacher's commitment to change and with school culture, structure and environment as mediating in Hong Kong. They found strong significant of transformational leadership on mediating variables and weak but significant effects on teachers commitment to change. This result is the effect of transformational leadership is similar in both North America and Hong Kong but the magnitude of these effects is far less in HK.
Herlod et al., (2007) investigated the influence of contextual and personal factors with employee commitment to change in USA. They found that, there is a positive relationship between self-efficacy and commitment to the change was stronger as the amount of simultaneous and overlapping change in the surroundings increased. They suggested for further research to conduct with including other contextual variables. However, this study is to examine the relationship between the leadership style and employee commitment to change and look further for the effect of organizational culture as moderating the effect between these variables.
Nowadays, there is a lack of studies among the leadership style as the most two dominate of leadership style (transformational and transactional leadership) and employee commitment to change. Thus, this research has been responded to the call by studying the relationship among them as well as to examine the relationship with organizational culture as moderating.
However, May-Chiun Lo&Ramayah& de Run (2010) examined the influence of transformational leadership style on employees' organizational commitment to change in Malaysia higher education context. They found that, the two dimensions of transformational leadership style namely, idealized influence and intellectual stimulation were found to have significant impact on three dimensions of commitment to change, namely personal goals, capacity belief, context belief,. They indicated that although leadership style is an important factor as an essential requirement for the effective and efficient commitment, there have been very few empirical studies on leadership style and organizational commitment to change. Moreover, Alimo-Mecalfe, Alban-Metcalfe, Bradley, Mariathasan, and Samele (2008), sated that transformational leaders would encourage and motivate the development of their employees based on integrity, openness and transparency, and the genuine valuing of others and their contributions. May-Chiun Lo et al (2010) declared that, the research on leadership style on organizational commitment to change is still limited in its ability to provide an unequivocal guideline and to advice on the best way to apply the suitable leadership style. Thus, this study is examining the relationship between the leadership style and employee commitment to change in Yemen public sector. As been stated by May-Chiun Lo et al (2010) that the pervious study only focused in western country and in private sector with neglecting the developing countries as well as the least developed country such as Yemen and the public sector.
May-Chiun Lo et al (2010) found that, the leadership style of supervisor is an important dimension of the social context because it shapes subordinates' organizational commitment to change in various important ways, and they have found that transformational leaders would be able to motivate subordinates to perform as expected.
May-Chiun Lo &Ramayah& de Run& Mung Ling (2009) examined the impact of transformational and transactional leadership styles on the lecturers' commitment to change with moderating effect leader member exchange in Malaysia higher education. They found that several dimensions of leadership styles were found to have direct impact on organizational commitment to change. Furthermore, they found that, transactional leaders are more able to achieve better commitment to change then transformational. Although, Walumbwa and Lawler (2003) who clarified that leaders who display transformational leadership styles are more effective in achieving significantly higher commitment levels than transactional leaders.
Based on this finding, Bhal and Ansari (2007) and May-Chiun Lo et al (2009) indicated that, high quality exchanges would lead to a perception of procedural justice and having said that, subordinates will be more committed and to accept changes.
