Empirical Study on the Impact of Leadership Behavior on Organizational Commitment in Plantation Companies in Malaysia

This research was carried out with the intention of examining the impact employees’ perceptions of their immediate supervisors’ supportive and directive leadership behavior and different types of organizational commitment in plantation companies in Malaysia. The study used a survey strategy “self-administered questionnaire”, to collect the primary data. The sample of the targeted consists of 300 supervisors and employees from various plantation companies in Malaysia by using the non-random sampling technique to participate in this study. The statistic results found that there are significant strong relationship between the leadership behavior and the organizational commitment. More importantly, there are significant impacts of the leadership behavior on organizational commitment. In addition, supportive and directive leadership behaviors do play important roles in determining the levels of employee's commitment. Leaders should consider in matching both leadership behaviors based on the situation of their subordinate. Thus, the paper contributes to the existing pool of knowledge on the empirical impact of leadership behaviors on organizational commitment. Different aspects of these variables were tested, so as to provide a wider and more comprehensive understanding of the factors that affect organizations and employees in plantation company's societies in Malaysia.