The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between employees' perceptions of their immediate supervisors' relations-oriented and task-oriented leadership behaviors and different types of organizational commitment. Bass & Avolio's (1995) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ Form 5X) was used to measure relations-oriented and task-oriented leadership behaviors. Meyer & Allen's (1997) Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) was used to measure organizational commitment. Participants in the research included 361 employees who worked for the city of Charlottesville, Virginia. These employees were located in eight departments that varied in the area of technical functioning, size, and academic levels. Factor analyses, with principal component extraction and varimax rotation, were performed to determine how the MLQ Form 5X items would load onto a 2-factor model of relations-oriented and task-oriented leadership behaviors. The task-oriented items of contingent reward loaded with the relations-oriented items, and the non-leadership items of laissez-faire loaded with the task-oriented items. These findings resulted in an arrangement of relations-oriented and task-oriented subscales that was different than the arrangement proposed by Bass & Avolio (1995). Correlations for the MLQ Form 5X revealed multicollinearity among all the relations-oriented subscales and two of the task-oriented subscales, preventing any interpretations about the amount of variance that any particular type of relations-oriented or task-oriented leadership behavior might explain in organizational commitment. Factor scores were used to perform regressions and investigate the amount of variance relations-oriented leadership behaviors and task-oriented leadership behaviors explained in organizational commitment. Relations-oriented leadership behaviors explained the greatest amount of variance in affective commitment, somewhat less variance in normative commitment, and no variance in continuance commitment. The results for task-oriented leadership behaviors revealed the same pattern of relationships with the different types of organizational commitment, only weaker. / Ph. D.

Studiens syfte är att få kunskap om hur den inre organisatoriska kontexten kan påverka förstalinjechefers ledarskapsbeteende gentemot underställda och hur den inre kontexten kan påverka ledarskapseffektiviteten. Studien har genomförts med en kvalitativ forskningsansats där tre stycken avdelningschefer samt en HR-chef i en organisation har intervjuats. Studien fokuserar på hur kontexten påverkar, begränsar, förstärker eller styr en organisations avdelningschefer till att använda en viss form av ledarstil eller beteende. De ledarstilar vi har utgått från är ett uppgiftsorienterat- samt relationsorienterat ledarskap. I studien har vi funnit att den inre kontextens variabler påverkar både ett uppgiftsorienterat- och ett relationsorienterat ledarskapsbeteende hos avdelningschefer. Vi har kunnat urskilja hur variabler i den inre organisatoriska kontexten påverkar avdelningschefers ledarskapsbeteende är individuellt. I studien har vi använt engagemang samt sjukskrivningsstatistik hos de underställda som mått på ledarskapseffektivitet. Studien visar att i en inre organisatorisk kontext med flertalet substitut för ett uppgiftsorienterat ledarskapsbeteende, kan en relationsorienterad ledarstil vara mer effektiv för att öka engagemang och minska sjukfrånvaron bland underställda. / The purpose of this study is to gain knowledge about how the internal organizational context may affect the first line managers leadership behavior toward subordinates and how the internal context can influence leadership effectiveness. The study was conducted using a qualitative research approach where three department managers and one HR manager in an organization were interviewed. The study focuses on how the context affects, restricts, amplifies or controls an organization's department managers to use a certain kind of leadership style and behavior. The leadership styles we have used in this study is based on a task- and relationship-oriented leadership. The study found that the internal contextual variables affects both the task- and relationship-oriented leadership behavior of the department managers. We have been able to discern that there are individual differences in how the variables in the internal organizational context affects department managers leadership behavior and style. We have used the commitment and level of absenteeism of subordinates as a measure of leadership effectiveness. The study shows that in an internal organizational context with several substitutes for a task-oriented leadership behavior, a relationship-oriented leadership style could be more effective in increasing the level of commitment and reduce the level of absenteeism of subordinates.