How to increase organizational commitment through transactional leadership

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between transactional leadership and willing organizational commitment in two significantly different organizations (one from the healthcare sector and one from manufacturing). Design/methodology/approach – Partial Least Squares was used to develop a mediation model explaining the underlying mechanism between contingent reward leadership and willing organizational commitment. Findings – The data indicates that, as expected, the relationship between transactional leadership and willing commitment in the manufacturing organization was mediated by both competence and relatedness; however, in the healthcare organization, to the surprise, this relationship was mediated by competence only. Practical implications – The authors develop a model that could help organizational managers and consultants improve the productivity and effectiveness of their work by taking the findings into account. Originality/value – Previous research has focused on the effectiveness of transformational research: this paper is one of the first to explore the relationship between transactional leadership and willing organizational commitment, taking into account the mediation effect of psychological need satisfaction.