Link between transformational leadership and teachers organizational commitment in Addis Ababa government secondary schools

Abstract This study has explored the link between school principals’ transformational leadership style to teachers’ organizational commitment in Addis Ababa government secondary schools employing correlational research design. Stratified random sampling technique was applied to draw a representative sample of 385 teachers for the study. The result of this study shows that transformational leadership is less practiced in Addis Ababa government secondary schools. The study further reveals that transformational leadership is positively and significantly related to teachers’ organizational commitment. Hence, improving the exercise of transformational leadership in schools may heighten the teachers’ organizational commitment. Further research is required with more sample of the study including school principals, students and parent teacher association to examine the link in more detail in Ethiopian context.


Introduction
Transformational leaders shape the organizational commitment of employees towards a shared vision (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Several research findings show that transformational leadership is associated to organizational commitment. Correspondingly, commitment allows the individual to utilize as much effort as possible to achieve the objectives (Cohen, 2003). Practices such as pay, recognition and working on difficult environments are significantly related to employee organizational commitment (Chew & Chan, 2008;Fiorito et al., 2007). Bal et al. (2014) pointed out that there is a strong positive relationship between employees' participation in decision-making processes with an affective and normative organizational commitment.
Similar results have been reported in studies carried out in educational organizations. Accordingly, researchers explored the relationship between the organizational commitment of teachers and principals' transformation leadership. For example, Gyeltshen (2019) found out a positive and significant relationship between principals transformational leadership and teachers organizational commitment in secondary schools. Others argue that transformational leadership positively influences the affective organizational commitment of teachers in schools (Lai et al., 2014). The idealized influence of transformational leadership has a greater positive impact on the organizational commitment of teachers in secondary schools (Feizi et al., 2014).
Correspondingly, Bass and Riggio (2006) asserted that transformational leadership components can enhance employee organizational commitment. The Bass and Riggio view also works to increase teachers' commitment. For instance, the teacher will copy and act accordingly with modification if a leader is highly idealized power. On the other hand, if leaders apply intellectual stimulation, teachers will be innovative in problem solving by using their expertise and imagination to meet the school's goals, while leaders are inspiring, teachers will contribute with a strong commitment to achieving goals.
Committed teachers are constantly seeking educational strategies to help learners better understand (Altun, 2013;Maiyani, 2017). These teachers' enjoy their work and always think about the knowledge relevant to their teaching (Maiyani, 2017). Celep's (2000) study shows that teachers had the right pride in their school and played their role in achieving the school goal relevant enough to the profession, but they were less interested to continue in the profession because of low professional status. However, in most Ethiopian schools, findings show that when transformational leadership was less practiced, teachers' organizational commitment got lower (Geda, 2015).
Research studies conducted in the Southern parts of Ethiopia indicated the presence of positive relationship between transformational leadership and teachers' commitment (Lerra, 2021). Similar studies conducted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, revealed the same positive and significant relationship between transformational leadership behaviors and organizational commitment (affective, continuance and normative commitment) and the relationship was strong (Tewodros, 2019). Another study from Bale Zone, Ethiopia, found out that laissez-faire style of leadership played roles in determining the levels of teachers' commitment and more specifically it showed positive relationship with affective commitment, inverse relationship with normative commitment but it had no significant relationship with continuance commitment (Ayele, 2022). Although the study was carried out at private higher education institutions, Temesgen and Tilahun on the relationship between leadership styles and employee commitment show that transformational leadership style has significant and positive relationship with affective and continuance employee commitments while transactional leadership style has significant and positive correlation with only normative commitment. A laissezfaire leadership style is found to be significantly and negatively associated with employees' affective commitment (Teshome, 2013).
Despite the presence of few literatures, studies are lacking on the associations between transformational leadership and teachers' organizational commitment in Ethiopian school context particularly on the relationship between transformational, transactional and laissezfaire styles of leadership with teachers' affective, normative and continuance commitment in Addis Ababa government schools. Moreover, this study will contribute to the existing body of knowledge on the link between school leaders' transformational leadership and teachers' organizational commitment in Ethiopian secondary schools. Furthermore, the researchers observed a low level of organizational commitment among the teachers in the Addis Ababa government school, which requires further research, and this research aims to find out the connection with transformational leadership. Thus, this study intended to answer the following basic questions: 1. To what extent transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles related to teachers organizational commitment?

Research design
Correlational research design was employed to explore the link between school leaders' transformational leadership practices and teachers' organizational commitments. Accordingly, this design is useful for associating two or more variables using statistical techniques (Creswell, 2012;Walliman, 2011).

Population and samples of the study
The study was carried out at the capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa City Administration. Among 11 sub cities in the city administration, five sub cities; Akaky Kaliti, Bole, Kirkos, Gulele and Yeka were drawn using simple random sampling technique for this study. Government secondary schools are located in each sub-city and there is limited discrepancy in the number of schools in the sub-cities.
On top of this, 14 government secondary schools from 29 were drawn using stratified random sampling technique to conduct this study (three from each of the four sub-cities and two from the remaining one based on the proportion of the available number of secondary schools in each sub-city; City Government of Addis Ababa Education Bureau, 2017\2018). The schools were taken as the stratum. A total of 385 (41.4%) of teachers were selected from 931 to respond for questionnaires of the study employing stratified random sampling technique. For a study involving data collection from single group, the current sample size of 385 is taken as reasonably high for computing and reporting correlation and regression estimates (Creswell, 2012). Among 385 questionnaires distributed, 335 (87%) were properly filled and returned for data analysis. The primary data obtained from teachers' using two questionnaires MLQ and OCQ were analyzed using data analysis tools such as percentage, mean and regression to see a significant relationship between the study variables. Finally, the reported results of data analyses were conducted by excluding ## cases with missing data.

Data gathering instruments
A multifactor leadership questionnaire and an organizational commitment questionnaire were used for this study. This study used the MLQ 5X-short, which was employed in a number of studies (Avolio et al., 1999;Balyer, 2012;Bass & Riggio, 2006;Howell & Avolio, 1993;Nguni et al., 2006). In Ethiopia, Tewodros (2019) and Teshome (2013) employed the instruments to carry out comparable studies and found it reliable and valid for the context. Similarly, Ayana, Dessalegn and Getachew (2021) used the same instrument in studying school principals' leadership behavior and teachers' commitment in secondary schools of Buno Bedele Zone, Ethiopia and found it useful for the Ethiopian high schools.
The MLQ was designed with a five point Likert scale ranging from not at all (0), ones in a while (1), sometimes (2), fairly often (3) and frequently (4) developed by Bass and Avolio (Avolio & Bass, 1995;Bass & Avolio, 2004). The validity of MLQ was tested. The alpha value for the majority of the items is higher than the cutoff value, which was indicated in numerous researches (Antonakis et al., 2003;Avolio & Bass, 1995;Avolio et al., 1999). Therefore, the internal consistencies were as stated above a score of .70 for each element of transformational leadership except for management by exception (.63) such as intellectual stimulation (.83), individualized consideration (.79), contingent reward (.80) and management by exception passive (.84; Avolio et al., 1999). From the followers rating the α value for the five I'S followers-rating transformational score fell between .70 and .83, for transactional .73 to .74 and for laissez-faire scores fell between .70 and .74 (Bass & Avolio, 2004).
Furthermore, the validity and reliability of the transformational leadership factor constructs were checked by computing CFA, AVE and Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient and reported as follows. Confirmatory factor analysis of the multifactorial leadership questionnaire was therefore investigated in 335 teachers to test the relationship between latent and measured variables using statistical package AMOS 23 software. The model contains 81 variables, of which 36 are endogenous (observed) variables and 45 are unobserved (exogenous variables).
The standardized factor loadings of the estimates range from 0.53 to 0.87, which exceeds the 0.5 limit for most social science studies (Hair et al., 2010). Estimates of AVE are also above 0.5, indicating that there is reasonable convergence across the nine dimensions of the multifactor leadership questionnaire, with most of the variance shared by those dimensions. Construct reliability scores fell between 0.77 and 0.91, indicating high internal consistency of the construct. Therefore, using the above data, this model is suitable for measuring transformational leadership behaviors of secondary school principals in Addis Ababa.
The second questionnaire used to collect data on teachers' organizational commitment variables was developed by Meyer and Allen (Allen & Meyer, 1990). The shortened form of the questionnaire by Allen and Meyer (1996), with 6 items per dimension was applied. A similar questionnaire was also used in the Ethiopian context by Ayele and Haramaya (2022) and found it reliable and valid for the same purpose. The questionnaire was designed using a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree," and respondents were asked to select from value alternatives 5 = strongly agreed, 4 = agreed, 3 = neutral, 2 = disagreed and 1 = strongly disagreed (Allen & Meyer, 1990). The employee commitment scale consists of three components, including items on the affective commitment scale, items on the normative commitment scale, and items on the continuance commitment scale. The reliability of the instrument was tested and alpha coefficients of three components were found: ACS (0.87), CCS (0.75) and NCS (0.79).
Again, the validity and reliability of the organizational commitment construct was checked using CFA, AVE and Cronbach's alpha reliability test and reported as follows. Hence, a confirmatory factor analysis of the organizational commitment questionnaire was also examined with 335 teachers to test the relationship between latent and measured variables using statistical package AMOS 23 software. The model contains 39 variables, of which 18 endogenous (observed) variables and 21 are unobserved (exogenous variables).
The standardized factor loadings of the estimates range from 0.53 to 0.86, which is above the threshold of 0.5 for most social science studies (Hair et al., 2010). Estimates of AVE are greater than 0.5, indicating reasonable convergence across the three dimensions of the Organizational commitment Questionnaire, with most of the variance shared across these dimensions. Construct reliability scores fell between 0.84 and 0.86, indicating high internal consistency of the construct. The data therefore suggest that this model is suitable for measuring the organizational commitment of secondary school teachers in Addis Ababa.

Data analysis methods
Percentage was employed to analyze the general background of the respondents. Mean was used to find out the dominant leadership style of school leaders. It has also been used to study the dominant teachers' organizational commitment in government secondary schools. Data analysis was conducted by taking teachers as unit of analysis in which mean and standard deviation were reported. Meanwhile, multiple regression analysis was performed to predict the value of the dependent variables (teachers' organizational commitment) based on the value of the independent variables (transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles). Karl Pearson's product momentum correlation analysis was applied to test the strength of the association between leadership style and organizational commitment (Manion & Morrison, 2007).

General characteristics of the respondents
An analysis of teacher background characteristics was performed to determine the teachers' experience and ability to respond the questionnaires in this study. The study result discloses that the majority of teachers (257, 77%) were males. The study found that the majority (77%) of the 257 teachers were males. This shows that secondary school teaching in Addis Ababa is maledominated.
Regarding the educational background of the respondents, most of the respondents, 249 (74%) teachers, were BA/BSc graduates and 86 (26%) teachers were MA/MSc graduates. From this, we can infer that the sample respondents appear to have adequate qualifications to participate in secondary school teaching.
With regard to professional experience, 28 (8%) teachers had 1-10 years of service and 134 (40%) of them had 11-15 years of service. The remaining 173 (52%) of the teachers had served more than 15 years. From this data, we can conclude that the highest proportions of sample teachers are well experienced. This could help improve the practice of transformational leadership in schools.

School leaders' leadership style as rated by teachers
As revealed in Table 1 and 2, the mean value of teachers shows that 2.5 for transformational with a standard deviation of 1.32, 2.44 with a standard deviation of 1.2 for transactional and 2.32 with a standard deviation of 1.14 for laissez-faire leadership style. This indicates that the teachers believed transformational leadership is the dominant style of leadership practiced by school leaders. However, it is parciced at moderate level. Findings by Yohannes and Wasonga (2021) and Duressa and Asfaw (2014) are also consistent with this result and argue that low level transformational and transactional leadership styles are practiced in Ethiopian schools. Similarly, Geda (2015) showed in his study that transformational leadership practices were not high in Oromia region.

Teachers' organizational commitment
The descriptive data in the above table depicts that the three dimensions of organizational commitment were rated low by teachers with a mean score of 2.18, 2.17 and 2.11 to affective commitment, normative commitment and continuance commitment, respectively. Hence, teachers at Addis Ababa government secondary school are less enthusiastic about the goals of the school and less interested in staying in school and working with their peers because of their educational responsibilities. They also felt less committed to staying in school because of the returns they earned from teaching. This result is associated with Geda (2015) and Anwar et al. (2016) study found that Ethiopian secondary school teachers had low organizational commitment. A study by Tadesse (2019) similarly shows low affective and normative organizational commitment of teachers in Ethiopian secondary schools.
According to the correlation analysis result which is depicted in Table 3, there is a fairly strong positive relationship between transformational leadership and transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles (r = .86, p < .05 and r = .60, p < .05 respectively). Similarly, there is a moderate positive relationship between transactional leadership and laissez-faire leadership style (r = .62, p < .05). Hence, the three leadership styles are positively and significantly correlated. This result implies that when we intervene and improve our practices on one of the leadership styles, there is a high probability that the other styles will be positively improved.
According to the correlation analysis result seen in the same table 2, there is a moderate positive relationship between affective commitment and normative commitment (r = .60, p < .05). Similarly, affective commitment is significantly and positively related to continuance commitment (r = .44, p < .05). Normative commitment is also significantly and positively related to continuance commitment (r = .68, p < .05). Hence, the three organizational commitment types are significantly related and improving one of the organizational commitments may lead us to an improvement in the other types of commitment. Conversely, a failure in one of the organizational commitment may result in a similar trend in the others too. This finding is in line with the results of an Ethiopian research conducted by Legesse where he found a statistically significant positive relationship between affective organizational commitment with continuance and normative organizational commitments (Legesse, 2017).

Influence of school leaders transformational leadership to teachers commitment
As depicted in Table 4, the results of the study show that three predictor variables explain 43% of the variance in the affective organizational commitment of teachers at Addis Ababa high schools, which implies that with all independent variables provides an effective predictive model. As clearly shown is the same table, the analysis of the variance from the SPSS regression procedure generate results (F = 68, p < .05). Hence, teachers' affective commitment is dependent on the transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles of school leaders.
According to the regression analysis result seen in Table 4, the strongest predictor in this model is transformational leadership (beta = .56, t = 7.18, p < .05). Transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles are also significantly related to teachers' affective organizational commitment (beta = .12, t = 2.31, p < .05) and (beta = −.51, t = −10.91, p < .05), respectively. But laissez-faire leadership style is inversely related to teachers' affective organizational commitment. It is therefore, transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles of leadership significantly related to teachers' affective organizational commitment.
The result of this study is in parallel with some scholars' findings; for example, a local research shows a positive relationship between transformational leadership and teachers' commitment (Lerra, 2021). Another local research by Tewodros (2019) also indicated a similar positive and strong relationship between transformational leadership style and teachers' organizational commitment (affective, continuance and normative commitment). Moreover, international studies conducted by Lai et al. (2014) and Feizi et al. (2014) confirmed that transformational leadership has a positive impact on the affective teachers' commitment. Similarly, Gyeltshen (2019) pointed out positive and significant relationship between principals' transformational leadership and teachers' commitment in secondary schools.
The results of the analysis correspondingly reveal that school leaders transformational leadership and teachers' affective organizational commitment are positively related (r = .39, p < .05). Similarly, there is a fairly significant positive relationship between transactional leadership and teachers' affective commitment (r = .36, p < .05) while, there is a significant inverse relationship between laissez-faire leadership with affective commitment (r = −.30, p < .05). Hence, transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles are significantly related to teachers' organizational commitment.
The findings indicated that while an improvement in our practice of transformational and transactional leadership improves our affective commitment, an increase in our practice of laissezfaire leadership style may minimize our affective commitment and vice versa. An Ethiopian research by Ayana, Dessalegn & Getachew (2021) also showed that Laissez-faire leadership style is significantly and negatively associated with teachers' affective commitment. However, the current finding contradicts to the results of Ayele, where he found Laissez-faire style of leadership showing positive relationship with affective commitment, inverse relationship with normative commitment but no significant relationship with continuance commitment (Ayele, 2022). This difference might be because Ayele's study was conducted in a regional area and the current study is carried out in the capital city of the country where the needs and challenges of the teachers can be quite different from the region.

Influence of school leaders transformational leadership to teachers normative commitment
As depicted in Table 5, the finding of the study shows that the three predictor variables explain 38% of the variance in normative organizational commitment of teachers in government high .00 Metaferia et al., Cogent Education (2023) schools of Addis Ababa due to the practice of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles of school principals.
As clearly shown is the same table, the analysis of the variance from the SPSS regression procedure generate results (F = 67.96, p < .05). Hence, teachers' normative commitment is dependent on the transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles of school leaders.
According to regression analysis result presented in Table 5, the strongest predictors in this model are transformational leadership (beta = .43, t = 5.56, p < .05). Correspondingly, the regression analysis result also indicates that transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles are significantly related to teachers' normative commitment (beta = .16, t = 2.11, p < .05 and beta = −.50, t = −10.73, p < .05 respectively). However, laissez-faire leadership style is inversely related to teachers' normative organizational commitment. Therefore, transformational, transactional and laissez-faire styles of leadership are all significantly related to teachers' normative organizational commitment.
From the above data, there is a moderately positive relationship between school leaders' transformational leadership and teachers' normative organizational commitment (r = .40, p < .05). However, the research study of Ayana, Dessalegn & Getachew (2021) in the secondary schools of Buno Bedele Zone (Ethiopia) shows no relationship between normative commitment and transformational leadership style. This may be due to the difference in study areas; that is, teachers of rural versus urban schools.
The relationship between transactional leadership and teachers normative organizational commitment is moderately positive (r = .38, p < .05) while, the relationship between laissez-faire leadership with teachers normative organizational commitment is significant but negative (r = −.31, p < .05).

Influence of school leaders transformational leadership to teachers continuance commitment
As depicted in Table 6, the finding of the study shows that the three predictor variables explain 14% of the variance in continuance organizational commitment of teachers in government high schools of Addis Ababa. As shown in the same table, the analysis of the variance from the SPSS regression procedure generate results (F = 4.68, p < .05). Hence, teachers' continuance commitment is dependent on the transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles of school leaders.
According to regression analysis result seen in Table 6, the strongest predictors in this model are transactional leadership (beta = .29, t = 3.07, p < .05). Transformational leadership is also a significant predictor of teachers' organizational commitment (beta = .15, t = 2.77, p < .05). But, laissez-faire leadership style is not significantly related to teachers' continuance organizational commitment in government high schools of Addis Ababa (p > .05).
The results of the analysis similarly disclosed that school leaders transactional leadership and teachers continuance commitment are weakly correlated (r = .17, p < .05). The relationship between transformational leadership and teachers continuance commitment is significant (r = .15, p < .05). The relationship between laissez-faire leadership with teachers continuance commitment is positive (r = .11) but not significant (p > .05). Hence, transformational and transactional leadership styles are significantly related to teachers' continuance organizational commitment. This result is consistent with the findings of Ayana, Dessalegn and Getachew (2021) where they found a positive relationship between transformational leadership behaviors and teachers' continuance commitment variable.

Conclusion
This study examined the relationship between principals' transformational leadership styles and teachers' organizational commitment in Addis Ababa government secondary schools using a correlational research design. The findings indicate that transformational leadership is less practiced and is associated with low levels of teachers' organizational commitment in schools. Accordingly, transformational and transactional leadership styles are positively correlated with teachers' affective organizational commitment. However, a laissez-faire leadership style is significant but negatively related with teachers' affective organizational commitment. On the other hand, there is a moderately positive association between school leaders' transformational and transactional leadership styles and teachers' normative organizational commitment. Though, the relationship between laissez-faire leadership styles and teachers' normative commitment is significant but inversely related.
Furthermore, the relationship between transformational and transactional leadership styles and teachers' continuance commitment is significant. In contrast, laissez-faire leadership style is not significantly related to teachers' continuance organizational commitment.
Overall, teachers perceived that their principals' are practicing transformational leadership style than transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles in their schools. The result of this study further reveals that transformational leadership is a significant predicator of teachers' organizational commitment. Moreover, the study implies that improving the practice of transformational leadership can enhance teachers' organizational commitment for better schooling. However, as the data in the current study were collected only from teachers, further research in Ethiopian school contexts involving school leaders, community members and educational experts is required.