Abstract:
Evidences show that leadership style pursued by managers/supervisors is among underlying factor
determining the productivity of employee in public and private organizations in the Ethiopia.
Nonetheless, investigation on the relationship between leadership style and employee commitment in
Ethio-Agri CEFT is very scanty. Thus, the objective of the current study is to examine the
relationship between leadership style(transformational, transaction and laissez-faire) and employee
commitment (affective, normative and continuous) in Ethio-Agri CEFT. Information was gathered
from sample of 153 respondents (23 leaders and 130 employees).The Multifactor Leadership
Questionnaire (MLQ) of this research was adopted from Bass and Avolio‘s (1997) Full Range
Leadership Development Theory, which is 36 items and Organizational Commitment Questionnaire
(OCQ), was adopted from Meyer and Allen (1997), which is 12 items. These items are rated using a
5-point Likert scale. And the questionnaires were modified according to the specific title of the
research. Descriptive analysis shows transactional leadership style as the most frequently exhibited
leadership style (Mean=2.50; SD=0.72) followed by transformational (Mean=1.87; SD=1.01) and
laissez-fair style (Mean=0.47; SD=0.68). The correlation analysis revealed significant positive
correlation of transformational and transactional leadership styles with employee performance while
laissez-fair leadership style was negatively correlated with performance. The result from multiple
linear regressions showed transactional and transformational styles have significant positive effect
while laissez-faire style affected employee performance score more adversely. In order to enhance
the productivity of their employees more significantly, the study finally recommend the company to
execute more of transformational style. Moreover, the institution‘s leaders should improve the level
of employees‘ commitment through actually practicing effective type of leadership style.
