Abstract:
The study investigated the relationship between leadership styles and organisational commitment
in two selected higher education institutions in South Africa. Transformation is a topical issue in
the South African higher education institutions. The slow progress in attempts to transform the
sector can be attributed to leadership styles and commitment. The study employed a quantitative
research design and made use of a self-administered questionnaire to gather data. The
Multifactor-Leadership and Organisational Commitment questionnaires were used for data
collection. The researcher used stratified sampling by grouping employees from each institution
into academic and non-academic strata. In this study, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation,
multiple regression analysis were performed. The study indicated that transformational leadership
and transactional leadership styles are significantly correlated with some of the organisational
commitment constructs. The results further revealed that transformational leadership style
explained the variance on organisational commitment better than transactional and laissez faire.
Therefore, the study concludes that there is no one size fit all and recommended that each
institution should diagnose its own situation for better pictorial view of what will work for that
organisation. It is further recommended that leaders in higher education institutions should
embrace more of transformational leadership as it has potential of transforming these institutions.
