Purpose -The intention of this study is to examine the linkage between the leadership style on employee affective commitment to change moderated by the organizational culture.
Design/methodology/approach - The research adopt a qualitative approach through a detail review of the extant literatures
Findings -The findings in the extant literature review reveals that leadership style is positively related to employee commitment to change and that the organizational culture positively moderates the link between leadership style and employee commitment to change.
Research limitations/implications - The authors are constrained to generalize the findings in this paper to all units in the public sector due to the qualitative approach. Thereby creating the need for future researchers to empirically validate the proposed theoretical linkage.
Originality/value -
Keywords. Leadership, commitment to change, change management, organizational culture
Paper type conceptual paper
Introduction
Change is a phenomenon that individuals and organizations face on a daily basis. Therefore, it is known that change is the only constant and it happens on a continuous basis (Schein et al., 2004). Even though we know about change management, most significant organizational change initiatives fail to meet expectations (Burke, 2002; Probst & Raisch, 2005). In addition, misunderstanding of the need for change have participated to many failed change efforts, which wasted organizations time, money, and other resources (Kotter, 1995). Furthermore, researches have done previously on organizational change focused on a variety of aspects such as leadership (Kotter, 1996), communication (Schweiger & DeNisi, 1991), and procedural fairness (Brockner, 2002), layoffs and turnover (Paterson et al., 2002) but there has been a lack of focus on individual commitment to change. Therefore, one of the many reasons why change efforts failed lies in humans and their inadequate or lack of commitment to change. The commitment to change comes from people in the organization. The current researcher observes that when there is commitment from people in the organization, the change is more likely to happen smoothly. This view is supported by studies such as Shum et al (2007) and Svensen et al (2007). Elias (2009), stressed on the failure of the change mostly came from the human aspect.
The recent articles Elias, (2009), and later impressive works by Ford et al (2003) and Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) indicated that commitment to change is a more important factor of support for change than organizational commitment, because commitment to change is more concerned with practical change, unlike the organizational commitment. Additionally, past studies of commitment have focused mainly on outcomes of commitment to an organization (e g., Meyer & Allen, 1997; Parish et al., 2008; and Cunningham, 2006) whereas this study examined the leadership and organizational culture as antecedents of commitment to change. Moreover, Meyer et al (2007) indicated that although commitment is usually referred to as a crucial factor of successful implementation of organizational change. Although that, there is little empirical evidence to support this claim.
Organizational change
In the organizational change, there is disagreement over which model can be in use in the organizational change. Therefore, various researchers have discussed the organizational change in a variety of aspects and they found many approaches, which elaborated the organizational change. Later on, they came out with two main approaches toward organizational change, which are the planned and emergent change (Burnes, 2004b).
Employee commitment to change
Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) argued that the "core essence" of commitment should be the same regardless of the target of that commitment. Based on a review of existing definitions, they suggested that commitment, in general, could be defined as "a force that binds an individual to a course of action of relevance to one or more targets." Explaining further, they said "a force that binds an individual to this course of action can reflect (i) a desire to provide support for the change based on a belief in its inherent benefits (affective commitment to change), (ii) a recognition that there are costs associated with failure to provide support for the change (continuance commitment to change), and (iii) a sense of obligation to provide support for the change (normative commitment to change). That is, employees can feel bound to support a change because they (want to), (have to), and/or (ought to) Meyer and Herscovitch (2002).
However, the researchers have discussed the importance of commitment to the change initiative undertaken in an organization. For example, Herscovitch and Meyer's (2002) research considered as one of the earliest studies on commitment to change and they have developed the model of organizational commitment. They also stressed that ''commitment is arguably one of the most important factors involved in employees' support for change initiatives'' (Meyer and Allen 1997 p. 474). Other targets of commitment could include a number of things such as a supervisor, an organizational unit, an occupation, a union, a goal, or any entity or behaviour. The current researcher sees the importance of employees because they play an important part to make organizational change successful (Huy, 2002). Therefore, the importance of employee commitment to change has been supported by many change researchers and they have posited that employee commitment to change is an essential part of a successful change implementation (e.g., Fedor et al., 2006; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Wanberg & Banas, 2000). Similarly, Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) discussed that ''commitment is believed to be one of the most important factors involved in employees' support for change initiatives''. They emphasized that "without such support, even the best-developed plans would fall by the wayside". Huy (2002) indicated that employees are more likely to be an important factor towards supporting the organizational change when there is a sense of trust and attachment to the organization. It also viewed the importance of the employee commitment in order to avoid any complacency. In spite of that, there is still lack of empirical study attempting to measure the construct, its antecedents and outcomes Cunningham (2006).
In addition, commitment to change has been identified as a critical factor in the successful implementation of change by many researchers such as Oakland and Tanner (2007). Moreover, Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) have developed an instrument specifically designed to measure commitment to organizational change.
Affective Commitment to Change
Affective commitment to change can be defined as the desire to support the change or wants to be committed to a target Meyer and Herscovitch (2001).They indicated that, when an individual wants to do something, he/she is less likely to be influenced strongly by opposing forces. In order to develop the individual's affective commitment to change Meyer and Herscovitch (2001) proposed three contributing factors: (1) involvement in the target of commitment, (2) shared values (as related to the outcome of the commitment), and (3) identification with the target of a commitment.
Transformational &Transactional leadership
Transformational leadership has been defined as "the process of influencing major changes in the attitudes and assumptions of organization members and building commitment for the organization's mission or objectives" (Yukl, 1989, p.204). Since 1980s, a body of theoretical work has been developing on the role of transformational leadership in affecting change (e.g., Bass, 1985; and Tichy and Ulrich, 1984) . Other dominant theories of leadership and transactional leadership refer mainly to the relationship between supervisors and subordinates in their day-to-day activities (e.g., how the this type of leader affects his follower by motivation and satisfaction), but not necessarily concerned with leadership as it relates to change or specifically how leaders effect change in people (House,1996).
Bass (1985) developed items describing leaders' behaviors in order to use Burns' theory. Transactional leadership has three factors which are; contingent rewards, management by exception and passive & active). Transformational theory has three factors but later changes in the work of (Bass and Avolio, 1994) have further divided one of the transformational factors into two. Thus, becoming a four dimension transformational leadership behavior which idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. Consequently, modification, Conger (1999) noted, is the impact of the conceptualization of leadership through the Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) which has received more attention in leadership literature than any other contribution.
Therefore, this model of transformational and transactional leadership which was developed by (Bass and Avolio, 1985; 2002) is related to the organizational change and adopted by this study.
This model of leadership is a measure of the Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and can be categorized into three types of leaders; transactional leadership, transformational leadership and laissez-fair. This study takes only the dominant two of the leadership styles, which are; transformational and transactional. Pervious researchers on leadership have consistently stated that laissez-faire are the least satisfying and least effective and efficient styles of leadership (Bass, 1990b). He further indicated that laissez-faire leadership style is accompanied by having a little sense of accomplishment, little clarity and a little sense of group unity. Bass, (1990b), Lippit and White (1943 ,1960) found that this style of leadership results in less concentration on work and poorer quality of work. Yammarino et al (1994) also reported that laissez-faire leadership is negatively related to the organization's performance. Therefore, due to the aforementioned, only two types of leadership styles are found suitable for the current research. Eisenbach et al (1999) indicated that leadership and organizational change are not well integrated. Hence, this study attempts to make them more integrated by studying the relationship between the leadership styles and employee commitment to change. Nadler and Tushman (1990) indicated that various arguments of leadership in context of organizational change led to a picture of the special kind of leadership that appears to be critical during the times of strategic organizational change. In addition they elaborated that strategic organizational change is different from incremental change because incremental change only affects some selected components of the organization. Unlike strategic organizational change which can affect the whole system of the organization and may fundamentally redefine what the organization is or even its basic framework such as strategy, structure, people, and process and sometimes can change the core values of the organization. Therefore, based on this theory commitment to change is expected to be effected by the two dominant styles of leadership; transformational and transactional leadership.
Organizational Culture
Organizational culture covers almost everything in an organization such as basic assumptions beliefs, values, models of behaviour, rituals, practices, symbols, heroes, artefacts and technology (Hofstede et al., 1990; Schein, 1985).
Hartog and Verburg (2004) indicated that organizational culture is a powerful tool to influence employees' behaviour and attitude. Therefore, it is important to understand the organizational culture in terms of deals with people, activities, and change in and outside the organization this has been studied by number of researchers. (Schraeder et al., 2005; Barbosa et al., 2007). Lau et al (2002) indicated that organizational culture is the values and operation beliefs which the employees share which can reflect the perception of the employee. However, most of the definitions include elements such as shared values, beliefs, assumptions, patterns of relationships, and behaviors.
Schein (1985) stated that culture can be present on three various levels: artifacts, shared values, and underlying assumptions. Firstly, artifacts which can be noticeable components of the culture, for instance structural design, dress code and physical layout. Secondly, shared value represents the standards organizational members make use of in judging situations, acts, object and people. Finally, underlying assumption which consider as the core culture for instance, people sharing things as human nature, social relationships and relationships between social institutions and their surroundings (Topolnytsky, 2002).
Members of the organization are always concerned with what the organization actually needs and want from them in order to be effectiveness members of the organization. Feldman (1976) understanding organizational culture is very crucial in order to make any change. This study however, seeks to establish the essential role that organizational culture plays in the relationship between the leadership style and employee commitment to change.
Methodology
This conceptual paper seeks to address the issue of the influencing if leadership style on employee affective commitment to changes, drawing on detailed this research finding obtained from a public sector ministries in Yemen .the ministries currently under the change phenomena, so that without holistic strategy, they have experienced some problem with implementing of make the change successful in this regard.
Analysis and Finding
In general , the finding obtained from the ministries interviews reveled that whilst some management were carrying out implementing change successfully ,they indicated that , these factor it is really important to make the change successful and also to increases the employee commitment to change .
Applicability of the conceptual framework
Employ together, the finding obtained from the interviews, then added to the conceptual explanatory framework that had been developed from earlier literature review.
Conclusion
The past decade has seen employees seeking to stable status for their organization, but during this rapid of change, the organization management has to respond quickly to this change. Once the management go for change some challenge face that change such as resistant to change or not really commitment to the change from the employee .however, the previous research had declared that , leadership style especially transformational and transactional leadership is one of the main factor which can enhance the employee commitment to the change .
once again , organizational culture also play an important role .therefore, this study had explained about all these factor and the finding of theses study is actually confirm the previous studies ,and explore some other factor such as employee training, goal setting for the employee ,job satisfaction and ales more.
