Leadership styles and employees’ work outcomes in nonprofit organizations: the role of work engagement

Purpose This study aims to investigate the effects of transformational and transactional leaders’ behaviors on employees’ affective commitment and organizational citizenship behavior in the context of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Additionally, this study attempts to examine the role of work engagement, as an intervening mechanism as work engagement in NPOs has been empirically neglected (Park et al., 2018). Design/methodology/approach Data were conducted from 400 employees working in Italian NPOs in the North of Italy. For verifying the hypotheses of this study, structural equation modeling techniques were implemented. Findings It was found that both transformational and transactional leaderships influenced positively affective commitment and organizational citizenship behavior, and work engagement was revealed to have significant positive mediating effects on the relationship between the variables examined in this study. Practical implications The results of this study may be beneficial to leaders and supervisors of NPOs, specifically regarding the influence of the leaders’ behaviors on the employees’ outcomes. Originality/value Due to the limited number of studies conducted on leadership in nonprofit organizations, this study theoretically and empirically contributes to the leadership literature as it is the first study to investigate the two styles of leadership on work-related outcomes via work engagement in the nonprofit sector.