Effect of Representative Leadership Styles on the Composition of Organization Commitment with the Facilitating Role of Organizational Maturity

This study proposes a framework to explore the effect of leadership styles in defining the composition of Organizational Commitment (OC) along effective, normative and continuance dimension. To bring in a more logical choice of leadership styles, limited numbers of representative leadership styles are derived from the long list of styles presented in the contemporary literature. Higher level of organizational maturity is proposed to facilitate the role of leadership style in shaping the composition of OC in three different dimensions. Organizational Maturity is measured by Capability Maturity Model (CMM), stage of Organization Life Cycle and specificity of Organizational Culture. Results support that a more persuasive and participative leadership style enhance the affective and normative commitment while continuance dimension of commitment is maintained under authoritative and unilateral style of leadership.


Introduction
The impact of leadership on organizational commitment (OC) has been a subject of inscription passably (Podsakoff et al., 1996;Chiok Foong Loke, 2001;Avolio, Zhu, Koh and Bhatia, 2004;Erben and Güneşer, 2008;Nguni et al., 2006).However, role of a given leadership style on bringing up affective, normative or continuance dimension within a given level of OC, is not yet explored.This study addresses this issue by proposing that different leadership styles can be associated with enhancing a specific dimension of the OC defined in terms of affective, normative and continuance according to the definitions of Meyer & Allen (1991).Additionally, existing surfeit of literature on each of the two fields of leadership style and OC has not been amalgamated specifically in view of organizational maturity as a facilitating factor.Dale and Fox (2008) point out to the lack of attention being given to possible mediators of leadership style-OC relationship, thus, to fill this void in the literature this study uses a rather a novel concept of organizational maturity as a facilitating factor pertaining to the situation in which leadership style acts.It is proposed that the impact of representative leadership styles on enhancing the affective, normative or continuance dimension can be more effectively mediated through a better level of organizational maturity.
Leadership styles as an antecedent have been used to predict several employee outcomes including the level of commitment of employees for their respective organizations (Podsakoff et al., 1996;Avolio et al. 2004;Lok and Crawford, 2004;Emery and Barker, 2007;Dale and Fox, 2008;Erben and Güneşer, 2008).Harnessing the contributions of employees and reducing turnover by eliciting maximum commitment remains a challenge for organizations to date (Porter et al., 1974).On the other hand, leadership has been shown to have a positive linkage with OC of employees (Lok and Crawford, 1999).It is therefore reasonable to investigate how appropriate leadership styles can contribute in bringing up a specific dimension of OC.It is pertinent to note that different dimensions of OC can be dominating under a specific leadership styles regardless of the same overall OC level.Dale and Fox (2008) pointed towards the role of situational factors in the success of a leadership style.It is therefore plausible to investigate the role of an important contingency factor i. e., organizational maturity, in facilitating the affect of appropriate leadership style along the specific direction of OC defined as affective, normative and continuance (Meyer & Allen, 1991).
From leadership style perspective, it is plausible to choose representative leadership style to be considered out of a long list of styles presented in the contemporary literature on leadership (Hassan et al., 2015).For this purpose, this study has amalgamated the existing surfeit of leadership styles in five distinguished clusters, each representing a distinct leadership style which can epitomize the several styles present in the leadership literature.
Initial part of study is focused on deriving these representative styles out of the long list of leadership styles through meta-analysis of leadership literature.This endeavor yields into five representative styles based on common characteristics, overlapping explanations and mutually non-exclusive definitions of leadership styles present in contemporary literature (Bass, 1997;Chiok Foong Loke, 2001;Zopiatis and Constanti, 2012).Data for empirical analyses was collected for leaders and their followers for the five representative leadership styles.Three dimensions of OC are defined as affective, normative and continuance as per definition of Meyer & Allen (1991).The facilitating factor of organizational maturity is measured along three approaches i.e., Organizational Life Cycle, Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and Specificity of Organizational Culture.
Results show that for leadership styles closer to authoritative and unilateral decision making with less concern for subordinates, the continuance dimension of commitment is a dominating factor with a comparatively lower level of overall commitment.However, when leadership style is inclined towards participative and persuasive decision making, with subordinates' interest being given a priority, normative and affective dimension of commitment is enhanced with a better overall commitment level.A higher level of organizational maturity is found to be an important condition under which these relationships prevails.A lower level of organizational maturity provide allowance to deviate from the above relationship.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows.Section two, following the introduction, presents a meta-analysis to define five representative leadership styles in the initial part and presents a review on OC and organizational maturity in the later part.Section three explains the proposed model while section four defines variables and explains data & sample.Section five discusses results and section five presents conclusion and limitations of study.

Literature Review
This study addresses the relationship between the leadership styles and the composition of OC in three different dimensions (i.e., affective, normative and continuance) by using two unique perspectives.First, it is proposed that representative leadership style can be helpful in bringing up one of the specific dimension the OC from affective, normative or continuance1 .Second, it is proposed that a better level of organizational maturity will facilitate this relationship.Existing surfeit of literature on each of the two fields of leadership style and the composition of OC, has not been amalgamated specifically in view of organizational maturity as a facilitating variable.

Selection of Representative Leadership Styles
Leadership, like other domains in the social sciences discipline, has unique implications when applied in different contexts and thus research on this much scribed subject remains equivocal in many facets such as demarcating between effective and ineffective leaders, formulation of a concerted definition and even its constitution (Jago, 1982;Burns, 1978;Muczyk and Reimann, 1987;Rost, 1991, quoted in Gini, 1997).Regardless, fascination with the subject of leadership has remained perennial resulting in profusion of theoretical and empirical studies on the subject (Jago, 1982;Muczyk and Reimann, 1987;Gini, 1997;De Vries, 1994).
The nerve center of the traditional approaches to understanding leadership has been the individual leader (Rowley, 1997;Rost, 1991, quoted in Avolio, 2007).Earliest theory of leadership notably known as the trait theory approach was an endeavor to identify distinct traits the embodiment of which will aid in identification of a leader or determining what the leader does by scrutinizing his behaviors (Smith, Carson and Alexandor, 1984).Thus, the traditional model of leadership narrowly focused on leader as a panacea and the process of leadership to be a vertical influence exerted by the leader on the followers which led to emergence of leadership styles such as autocratic, directive, task-oriented etc.
Overtime with emergence of self-managed work teams, flattening organizational structure, escalating competitiveness, organizations increasingly found the benefit of sharing the leadership with subordinates (Pearce and Sims, 2002;Bligh, Pearce and Kohles, 2006;Carson, Tesluk and Marrone, 2007).This expanded the leadership continuum to include styles such as participative, distributed, transformational etc. on the antithetical end.The leadership labyrinth under the realm of three main scientific paradigms i.e.Trait, Behavior and Contingency has extended to dozens of styles ranging between extremes of vertical and shared leadership.
Following Hassan, Asad and Hoshino (2015), an expansive look into the literature resulted in thirty-nine leadership styles.Table 1 enlists the characteristics of each style along with few references from literature that used and defined these terminologies.

Leadership style
Definitions presented in past literature 1.
Autocratic Leadership Leaders belonging to this style are disciplinary and less inclined care for the socio-emotional needs of followers with group, directive and one-sided decision making (Foels et al,. 2000;Van Vugt et al., 2003;De Cremer, 2006).

2.
Democratic Leadership Leaders belonging to this style are caring and participative.They are inclined for group decision making by maintaining good relationships with followers (Foels et al., 2000;Woods, 2004).
Transactional Leadership This style is associated with exchange of information, responsibilities as well as rewards (Eagly et al., 2003;Eeden et al., 2008). 5.
Task Oriented Leadership This style is for planning and organizing work activities, making others to follow roles, deadlines and defined targets.(Eagly and Johnson, 1990;Tabernero et al., 2009;Yukl, 2012).6.
Interpersonal Leadership These leaders are thoughtful, passionate, helping encouraging, and motivating followers for an honest and trustworthy relationship (Brodbeck et al., 2000).7.
Transformational Leadership This style is for visionary, inspirational and intellectual stimulation of followers and empowering them for high expectations (Bass, 1997;Jung and Avolio, 2000).8.
Charismatic Leadership This style is for personal influence and unconventional behavior that can simulate change with increasing the emotional attachment and risk orientation with the goal (Hunt, 1999;Hoogh et al., 2005).9.
Distributed Leadership These leaders like collaboration, good exchange relationship by emphasizing collaborative gain (Gronn, 2002;Mayrowetz, 2008).10.Participative Leadership These leaders like share goals, problems, advantages and risks with the followers fir a collaborative decision making based on consensus empowerment to subordinates (Rok, 2009;Huang et al., 2010).

Directive Leadership
This style is for unilateral decisions instructions and commands.Defining goals and targets and expecting followers to follow diligently (Muczyk and Reimann, 1987;Pearce and Sims Jr., 2002).12. Ethical Leadership Leadership based on care for others, honesty, collective gains, principled and self motivated riotous and cooperative decision making (Brown and Trevińo, 2006;Toor and Ofori, 2009).

Authoritative Leadership
This style is for self-assured, challenging, calculated and scheming behavior and expectations from followers (Pellegrini and Scandura, 2008).

Intellectual Leadership
These leaders have superior cognitive ability and can use it for innovative vision that can challenge status quo along with a caring for common good for followers (Dealtry, 2001;Andreasen, 2005;).

Instrumental Leadership
This is a practical approach based on the requirement of higher level of commitment and determination for goals by the followers (Rees and Segal, 1984;Southworth, 1993).17.Coercive Leadership A fear driven approach using aggression and trepidation for achieving goals.This can marginalize the creatively of followers (Spector, 1982).18. Team-oriented Leadership An inclination towards team building, for collective gains that can seldom challenge the status quo and prefer a democratic consensus for achievement of goals (Kezar, 1998;Javidan et al., 2006).

Delegative Leadership
These leaders prefer procedural justice without use of supremacy.They can share power, inspire followers by maintaining consensus (Leana, 1986;Krause et al., 2007).

Autonomous Leadership
These leaders are self-directed and self-motivated always look for novelty, diversity and uniqueness through knowledge sharing and achievement of challenging goals (Taggar et al., 1999).

Coaching Leadership
This approach stands for training followers, assisting them, facilitating them and developing them with a caring behavior to achieve testing goals (Robertson, 2009).

Affiliative Leadership
These leaders stand with followers and show a good team player role in trying times.These are inclined reduce conflict, consult less but care for relationship with the followers (Goleman, 2000).

Supportive Leadership
This style is characterized for trust in followers and their well being as a priority.These leaders like to delegate authority and support to make followers achieve self-directed targets (Muller et al., 2009).

Relationship-Oriented Leadership
These leaders value interpersonal relationship, based on friendly and supportive environment for followers (Tabernero et al., 2009;Yukl, 2012).

Consultative/Advisory Leadership
This style emphasis professional guidance to followers.The style is well suited for structured environment with internal locus of control (Selart, 2005;Krause et al., 2007).

Humane-oriented Leadership
This style characterized as honest, philanthropic, sympathetic, and humble.These leaders value social well fare and a caring relationship with the followers (Brodbeck et al., 2002).

Expressive Leadership
This style is for understanding and granting more autonomy to followers.Leaders care about socio-emotional behavior of followers (Rees and Segal, 1984;Southwork, 1993).

Visionary Leadership
These leaders are expressive of their ideas with a strong sense of interpersonal sensitivity, foresightedness and a proactive approach to guide followers (Westley and Mintzberg, 1989;Brown and Anfara, 2003).

Pacesetting Leadership
These leaders stands for excellence in standards and tend to use authority to achieve these goals.They present example of trustworthiness for the followers (Goleman, 2000).

Narcissist Leadership
These leaders are self-centered and conscious about their status sometime at the cost of, conflict and unfeeling behavior.They are less forgiving and aggressive to carry their personal agenda (Rosenthal and Pittinsky, 2006).

E-leadership
They are receptive of dynamism and change in the environment with high openness to experience (Avolio, Kahai and Dodge, 2001;Pulley and Sessa, 2001).

Achievement-Oriented Leadership
This style shows high level of output with challenging goals for subordinates.These leaders are self-confident and use it as tool to boost morale of followers (Muller and Turner, 2009).

Authentic Leadership
High level of self-confidence, persistence and moral courage are main characteristics of this style.These leaders believe in social justice, optimism and expect discipline and self-expressiveness from followers (Avolio and Gardner, 2005).

Servant Leadership
This style is characterized as follower-centric, altruistic, committed for the growth of followers (Beazley and Gemmill, 2006).

Citizen Leadership
These leaders are democratic, and show concern for people with a constructive mind to inspire followers for common good and team orientation (Booker, 2006).

Aversive Leadership
This style relies on coercive power, authority and exploitation to gain objectives through followers (Pearce and Sims Jr., 2002;Bligh et al., 2006).

Empowering Leadership
These leaders care for followers and tend to delegate authority and provide more autonomy to followers.They believe in team orientation and sharing of power as tools to achieve goals (Pearce and Sims Jr., 2002;Vecchio et al., 2010).

Opinion Leadership
These leaders socially alert and use dominance, confidence and social maturity to influence followers (Robertson and Myers, 1969;Chan and Misra, 1990).

Self-Protective Leadership
This style is pro status-conscious, self-dominating at the cost of conflict.Face saving and procedural aspects are emphasized in this style (Javidan et al., 2006).
Thirty nine leadership styles which stemmed from scrutinizing the literature are placed in five distinct groups in order to develop an unequivocal model of symbolic leadership styles.The existing long list of styles makes it impossible to effectively link the discussion on leadership styles with other frame of reference such as OC.Therefore, it is essential to organize the scattered list of leadership styles in logical sequence.Such an effort can identify the overlapping as well as mutually exclusive areas to streamline the discussion on this topic.Thus, to fill this void in the past literature this study amalgamates the several leadership styles into limited number of representative styles based on their common characteristics to present a more practical configuration of leadership styles to be compared with other frame of reference.
The proposed assortment will also aid to eliminate the existing controversies in the past literature which is brimming with leadership styles, however, without catering to their mutual exclusiveness.Therefore, to bring more consistency in the leadership literature, this study has derived five representative styles which are non-mutually exclusive.Also, these representative styles have been developed utilizing a common frame of reference i.e. focus on leader and centralization of decision making.The leadership styles (LS1 to LS4) can be seen along a continuum of focus and centralized decision-making gradually shifting from leader to subordinates.LS5 is an exceptional case and is included due to its importance in understanding the complete model of leadership.
The five groups are indicative of five distinct leadership styles whose characteristics are given in Table 2.The six critical areas selected to see the difference in five different styles are role of leader, leader's concern for others, distance from followers, his decision making style, follower's motivation and leader's focus on followers' growth.These critical areas were chosen because they are essential components of the leadership pie.Based on these characteristics of representative leadership styles, an amalgamation of the 39 leadership styles identified in five distinct clusters are given in Table 2.The leadership styles (LS1 to LS4) can be seen along a continuum of focus and centralized decision-making gradually shifting from leader to subordinates.LS5 composed of only 'laissez-faire' leadership style is an exceptional case and is included due to its importance in understanding the complete model of leadership.

Priority
to Followers Uninvolved LS1 consists of Autocratic, Transactional, Task-oriented, Directive, Authoritarian, Aversive, Narcissist, Instrumental, Coercive, Self-protective and Authoritative leadership styles.These 11 styles constitutes first representative leadership style which is characterized by a leader who clearly instructs, shows little concern for others, remains distant from followers and engages in unilateral decision making.LS2 includes, Participative, Interpersonal, Coaching, Affiliative, Supportive, Relations-oriented, Consultative-advisory, Democratic, Expressive, Team-oriented and Delegative leadership styles.This style encapsulates a leader who encourage followers to participate, demonstrates a high concern for them, focuses on building relationships by maintaining only a moderate distant from others and implements a shared decision making process.
LS3 includes, Transformational, Visionary, Charismatic, Achievement-oriented, Pacesetting, Empowering, E-leadership, Distributed, Intellectual, Opinion and Autonomous.The role of leader in this style is to encourage followers to seek high standards of excellence.The leader provides a strong vision, maintains low distance, shows high concern for others and engages in shared decision making by persuading followers to follow proposed vision.Successful leaders of this group make followers identify with their vision and zealously work to attain it.LS4 is composed of five styles namely: Servant, Citizen, Authentic, Humane-oriented and Ethical.This leader takes a unique approach to leadership by playing a role of steward instead of a conservatively believed role of hero.Resultantly, concern for others is supremely high.The leader endeavors to enable followers to attain their level of Moreover, leader of this group also engages in shared decision making which is solely in the best interest of the followers and prioritizes the growth of followers in all situations.
LS 5 only entails a single leadership style i.e. laissez faire leadership which has been included to understand complete model of leadership.Leader with laissez faire leadership style leave followers to complete tasks, make decisions and solve problems.The leader has little or no concern for followers and thus maintains a high distance from the.

Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment (OC) unlike leadership has emerged in popularity with the ascent of the last decade.However, similar to leadership OC of employees has been a topic of much interest in studies focusing on work place behavior (Mowday et al., 1979;Mathieu and Zajac, 1990;Mowday, 1999;Lok and Crawford, 2004).OC has been used as an antecedent and a consequence for various employee related variables in studies conducted by Porter et al. (1974), Mowday et al. (1979), Morris and Sherman (1981), and Larson and Fukami(1984).
Lyman Porter (1974) has received much attention due to the extensity of his work on empirical and theoretical domains of OC.He defined OC in terms of "the strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization" (Porter et al., 1974;Mowday et al., 1979).However, Porter's one-dimensional view of OC focused solely on the affective commitment (Mowday, 1999) was reinforced by Meyer & Allen (1990, 1991) who proposed a three component model of commitment to remove the conceptual differences.These include, affective commitment, normative commitment and continuous commitment.Affective commitment in Meyer and Allen's model is explained as "employees' emotional attachment to, identification with and involvement in the organization".Strong affective commitment implies that employees will stay with the organization because they want to do so.The second component of commitment defined by Meyer & Allen (1991) refers to employees' consideration of whether the cost of leaving the organization is greater than the cost of staying in the organization.The cost includes both intangible values such as relationship with other employees and tangible gains such as retirement or promotional benefits that employees may expect to receive from the organization.Strong continuance commitment implies that the employees will stay with the organization because they need to do so.The third and last component of commitment defined by Meyer & Allen (1991) refers to the employees' feelings of obligations and responsibility to their workplace.Strong normative commitment implies that employees will stay with the organization because they ought to do so.

Organizational Maturity
Organizational maturity is treated as a situational factor facilitating link between representative leadership styles and OC.Mature organizations, in contrast to immature organizations, have an acknowledged set of norms to abide by and a shared mind set which is institutionalized in the vision, value and mission.Differentiating a mature software organization from an immature, Paulk et al. (1993) highlighted unambiguous communication, planned processes, clear roles and responsibilities, and a disciplinary conduct to be the defining characteristics.Organization maturity for the purpose of this study has been measured using three approaches namely Capability Maturity Model, Lifecycle model and organizational culture perspective.
Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a widely recognized process improvement framework in the software industry (Sarshar et al., 1999;Kumta and Shah, 2002;Ngwenyama and Nielsen, 2003).CMM was developed to help organization assess the effectiveness and efficiency of its software development processes by expressing them as either mature or immature (Kaner and Karni, 2004;De Bruin and Rosemann, 2005).According to Kumta and Shah (2002) a mature process is "consistent with the way work actually gets done, defined, documented and continuously improved".CMM can be used as an indicator of an organization's maturity as it demarcates the process effectiveness and efficiency into five maturity levels.The five maturity levels represent an evolutionary path of the organization which progresses from the initial level corresponding to a state of immature processes to the last or optimized level which symbolizes a state of fully mature processes (Mathiassen and Sorenson, 1996;Sarshar et al., 1999;Kaner and Karni, 2004;Kumta and Shah, 2002).Each subsequent level corresponds to an added maturity or capability being introduced in the process and lay foundations for continuous process improvement (Paulk et al., 1993).
A range of maturity models have been crafted on the basis of initial CMM, such as decision-making capability maturity model (Kaner and Karni, 2004), business process management maturity model (De Bruin and Rosemann, 2005), leadership maturity model (Armitage, Carlen and Schulz, 2006) etc.A CMM is designed to help an organization adopt best practices in different domains and since the interested area of domain in this study is human capital management and workforce practices, therefore, People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM) will be employed to assess organizational maturity.A P-CMM focuses on continuously improving management and development of human asset of organization (Türetken and Demirörs, 2004).
From the perspective of P-CMM, organizational maturity is derived from workforce practices performed routinely inside the organization and the extent to which they are institutionalized.Accurate disbursement of information among subordinates, high formalization of roles and responsibilities and consistency in execution of rules and policies defines a mature organization.These organizations have greater capability to attract, develop and retain talent to execute business processes.Immature organization takes a reactionary approach to development and maintenance by having its managers more focused on solving crises than improving processes.
Organization lifecycle stage is another perspective on organizational Maturity being considered in this study.The four lifecycle stages of an organization are: Introduction characterized by few products/services and an organizational structure with authority centralized at the top, Growth characterized by rapid expansion of product line and personnel, increased operational complexity and escalating revenue, Maturity characterized by stable sales, greater volume of customers and complex organizational structure and Decline which is characterized by declining sales, increasing debt and resistance to change.The higher stages of the lifecycle indicate a higher maturity level as opposed to initial stages which represent a low level of maturity.
The third way to measure the organizational maturity is through the perspective of organizational culture.A specific culture is characterized by tightly knit organizational norms and a low tolerancefor deviant social behavior whereas a loose culture has weak norms and a high tolerance for deviant work place behavior (Gelfand et al., 2011).Triandis (2004), in his academic commentary on Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance dimension of culture, used the term 'tight' to explain the specific culture as having many rules, standards for correct behavior and an agreement on the norms.
This study proposes that a specific culture will lead to a greater organizational maturity because the processes are clearly defined and agreement on how to accomplish tasks is achieved among employees.In contrast, a loose culture will lead to a lower organizational maturity where organizational manifestations are weaker and deviance from workplace behavior is accommodated.Thus, if an organizational culture is specific instead of loose, it is reasonable to propose that organizational maturity will be higher and will consequently act as a better conductor for leadership style to elicit higher OC.

Proposed Model for Analyses
The study proposes that the relationship between representative leadership styles and specific dimension of organization commitment is mediated by organization maturity as measured alternatively by P-CMM, the lifecycle stage of the organization and specificity of its culture.It is hypothesized that higher organization maturity will act as better conduit for the leadership style to make the specific dimension of OC more dominating with a given level of commitment.Five representative leadership styles defined in the earlier part of literature review are proposed to be associated with different dimensions of commitment as follows.
Leadership style-1 is characterized as dominating and unilateral decision making with high distance and low concern for followers.Continuance commitment is what an employee need to do with expectations of tangible gains from organization.It is therefore proposed that under LS1 continuance dimension of commitment dominates with a low level of overall commitment.It is further proposed that a high level of organizational maturity may keep this relationship intact while a low organizational maturity may allow deviation from above expectations.
Leadership style-2 is defined a consulting decision making after getting feedback and participation from follower with moderate distance and concern for followers.Normative commitment is what employees ought to do owing to the feeling of ethical obligation from the organization while continuance commitment is related with the expectations of tangible gains.It is proposed that under LS2 normative or continuance dimensions of commitment dominate with a comparatively better level of overall commitment vis-a-vis LS1.A high maturity level in organization may facilitate above composition while a low maturity level provide allowance in it.
Leadership style-3 stands for participative decision making on the basis of consensus with a balanced concern and low distance from followers.Affective commitment is defined as what employees want to do in relation to their emotional attachment with the organization while normative dimension is associated with the ethical obligation.Thus, LS3 is expected to be associated with affective or normative dimensions of commitments to become dominating.It is therefore expected that LS3 would enhance both normative and continuance dimension of commitments.The relationship is better explained in high level of organizational maturity while deviations can be expected in case of a low maturity level.
Leadership style 4 is characterized by decision making by followers with assistance of leader while preference give to followers with almost no difference between leader and them.This style is expected to be associated with the affective dimension of commitment provided a higher level or organizational maturity prevails.It is therefore expected that LS4 enhances the continuance dimension of commitment with a higher level of overall OC.A higher level of organizational maturity makes this happen while a lower level provide allowance of deviation from it.
Leadership style 5 is characterized as indifferent decision making with almost no participation from followers and without considering the stake of followers.While this style is an exception from other selected style, it is expected that overall commitment, though very small, could have the dominating part of continuance commitment under high maturity level.
A conceptual framework has been formulated based on the literature review that accentuates three important variables namely: the five representative leadership styles, OC and organizational maturity as assessed by P-CMM, organizational lifecycle model and organizational culture.Organization maturity mediates the leadership style-OC relationship.

Leadership Style
A questionnaire for the subordinates was prepared and given to ten subordinates from each organization to rate their respective leader's leadership style on a 5-point response scale ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
The five broad categories of leadership styles, from LS1 to LS5, were measured by presenting 5 statements for each style to the subordinates to represent their strength of agreeableness and disagreeableness.The questionnaire included twenty-five questions in total.Questions 1 to 5 measured LS1.These questions reflect tendency of leader to give clear instructions, setting performance standards and use of unilateral decision making.Questions 6 to 10 measured LS2 which reflects seeking subordinates' input, encouraging participation and focus on building relationships.Questions 11-15 measured LS3 which reflect strong vision, encouraging subordinates to achieve challenging goals and explaining to them the outcome of their efforts.Questions 16-20 measured LS4 which reflect prioritizing subordinates' interest and their personal development and helping them to achieve their goals.Last five questions measured LS5 which reflect little concern for subordinates, leave them to make decisions and to solve problems.The total twenty-five statements were rated by the subordinates to assess what they perceived to be their leader's style of leadership.

Composition of Organizational Commitment
The commitment of employees was measured using Meyer & Allen (1991) model of organization commitment i.e. the type of commitment exhibited by employees were categorized either as affective, normative or continuance.The questionnaire included three statements for each of the three types of commitment which were presented to the subordinates.The subordinates rated themselves on the type of commitment they exhibit for their respective organizations on a 5-point response scale ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Organizational Maturity
The maturity of the organization's processes was evaluated using P-CMM, the lifecycle stage and degree of specificity of the organization's culture.disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) to assess P-CMM and organization culture's specificity.In addition, the employees also responded to the lifecycle stage of their organization based on their knowledge.

Data and Sample
Measures of leadership style, organization maturity and organization commitment were collected from 18 different organizations.Participants of the research include subordinates which for the purpose of this study are assumed as followers who rated their respective managers on their leadership style.The scope of the research covers eighteen organizations belonging to different industries such as software, banking, pharmaceutical and construction and on average had 50 employees in total.Ten employees working under one manager were selected from each organization who participated in this study to rate their manager's leadership style, identify the maturity of their organization's processes and asses the degree of specificity of their organization's culture.The participants also self-evaluated their commitment level for their respective organization.

Results and Discussion
The subordinates were surveyed to identify what they deemed to be the dominant leadership style of their respective leaders.To identify the dominant leadership style of a leader, the responses of the subordinates were averaged out.High score on a leadership style is considered as the dominant leadership style of a leader whilst the lowest score represents that leader least has that leadership style.Table 4 indicates the averaged out responses of the subordinates for their respective leaders for all leadership styles.The data is arranged according to the highest score in a specific leadership style from LS1 to LS5.Highlighted figures show the highest scores among the five comparative leadership styles for each leader in the sample.Two leaders score high on LS1, three on LS2, eleven on LS3, one on LS4 and one on LS5.* LS1-LS5 indicates leadership styles 1-5 **In each of the 18 cases, ten subordinates were presented with 25 questions, 5 each for one leadership style, to rate their leader on the 5 representative leadership styles.The scores of all ten subordinates were averaged out and the highest average score on a leadership style is assumed as the dominant leadership style of the particular leader.
However, further analysis was conducted to increase the reliability of using the highest average rating as the dominant style of the leaders by running one way anova for comparison of means and post-hoc tests.

One Way Anova and Post hoc Analysis
One-way anova testfor comparison of means was run to maintain that the difference in means of five leadership styles is significant and hence one style with highest mean value is the dominant leadership style.The results of one-way Anova for each of the eighteen cases are presented in Table 5.  6.This analysis allows for identifying which means are different as well as the size of the difference.The highest difference indicates the style with highest mean and thus will represent the dominant leadership style.The result indicates that due to the significant difference of means, the highest mean is indeed representative of the dominant leadership style of leaders.Based on the post-hoc analysis of sixteen cases, dominant leadership styles have been determined for each of the eighteen leaders.However, the results for Leader 6 and 10 are not significant and in these cases subordinates are unable to differentiate clearly between the leadership styles of their respective leaders.Thus, these two cases are an exception to existing outcomes of the dominant leadership styles of the leaders.The results indicate that out of 18 cases, LS1 is the dominant style of leaders 17 and 18, LS2 is the dominant style of leaders 8, 13 and 14, LS4 is the dominant style of leaders 16, LS5 is the dominant style of leader 10 and the rest have LS3 as their dominant leadership style.* Representative leadership style (LS1 to LS5) are defined by comparing the mean scores of respondents for five representative leadership styles.Organizational commitment is determined cumulatively for all employees and categorized along three dimensions of affective, normative, or continuance based on weighted scores of respondents on 5 point Likert scale.Measures of organizational maturity are based on the results of lifecycle stage of the organization, degree of specificity of its culture and capability maturity model.Organizations are categorized as being in introductory, growth, maturity or decline stage on the basis of number of years of its operation and respective industry average.The culture of the organization is categorized as specific or loose based on the rigidity in complying with established norms and processes.The P-CMM is determined on the basis of the degree of standardization and institutionalization of processes.
Table 7 present the results of conceptual model.Organizational maturity measured through lifecycle stage is recorded as introduction, growth, maturity and decline.However, decline stage is absent in the sample.OC is presented as overall commitment level as well as its composition along three different dimensions of affective, normative and continuance commitment.
Data on commitment measures is presented through weighted average of scores on five point Likert scale obtained from employees.Two cases of LS1 shows normative commitment as highly dominating factor with weighted values of Affective and Continuance about half of the normative component.Overall commitment level is quite low vis-a-vis other values in the sample.As organizational maturity measures show high maturity level, it is in line with the preposition that composition of OC under LS1 is moved towards normative dimension from otherwise expected of continuance dimension.Overall commitment level being low vis-a-vis other values in the sample is in line with the preposition of low commitment level under LS1.Two cases of LS2, where overall commitment level is reasonably high, show that low level of organizational maturity has allowed the composition of commitment to shift towards affective dimension from otherwise expected of normative domination.This is also evident from third case of LS2 where a higher level of organizational maturity has continuance as dominating dimension of a high level of commitment.
LS3 is one of the most prevalent style in the sample with 11 cases.As expected LS3 style shows a comparatively higher overall commitment level.Most of the results are in compliance with the preposition that under a better level of organizational maturity LS3 would enhance the affective dimension of commitment.However, there are two exceptions, one is organization number 11 where LS3 was able to maintain affective as dominating dimension of commitment despite an immature organizational structure.Second is the case of organization number 12 where despite a mature organizational structure LS3 was unable to maintain affective as dominating dimension.Nevertheless, the differences in the weighted scores of affective, normative and continuance dimensions are not very significant with a higher level of overall commitment as expected.One case of LS4 shows highest level of overall commitment level in the sample.This is in line with the preposition that LS4 positively affect the commitment level of organization.The results also show that under mature organizational conditions this style enhance the affective dimension of commitment.The difference between affective and other dimensions of commitments is reasonably significant in case of LS4 with highest level of affective commitment of 4.55 on a scale of 5.One case of LS5 is exception in the results.Contrary to the preposition it shows better level of OC and normative dimension as dominating than otherwise expected continuance.This might be because of two reasons that LS5 being an exception in the defined leadership styles could not be captured fully by the questionnaire or was not completely understood by the respondents.

Conclusion and Limitations
While link between leadership style and OC has been defined in several past studies, this research addresses the unique issue of composition of OC along affective, normative and continuance dimension and its association with different leadership styles.Similarly, the role of situational factors in Leadership-OC relationship is widely overlooked in past literature.Findings of this study explain the role of organizational maturity in channelizing the effect of leadership styles on defining the composition of OC in three dimensions stated above.
Contemporary literature on leadership presents a long list of leadership styles.These styles often have overlapping characteristics as they are defined in the absence of any common frame of reference and without consideration of mutual exclusiveness.This study sums up the long list of leadership styles presented in literature, into a limited number of representative styles to bring in a more logical picture of leadership styles.This may contribute to the ongoing debate on the rationale of leadership styles and its theoretical underpinnings.The proposed representative leadership styles are defined along a continuum from LS1 to LS4 with LS5 as an exception.The link of these leadership styles is explored along three dimensions of Organizational Commitment being one of the fundamental and important factor of organizational behavior.(OC).LS1 being characterized as assertive & unilateral decision making with high distance and low concern for followers, is found to score a comparatively low OC with continuance or normative as the dominating factors possible under this style.Similarly, LS2 is defined a consulting decision making after getting feedback and participation from follower with less distance and moderate concern for followers.This leadership style is found to enhance the normative or affective dimension to dominate with a comparatively better level of overall OC.LS3 stands for participative decision making on the basis of consensus with a balanced concern and low distance from followers.This style is found to be associated with affective dimension of commitment.LS4 is characterized by decision making by followers with assistance of leader while preference given to followers and almost no difference between leader and them.This style is supported to bring up affective dimension of commitment with a very handsome value of overall OC.Interestingly, high organizational maturity maintains and uphold the above stated prepositions while a low organizational maturity provide allowance aviations.These findings contribute in understanding the complex links of leadership style with the composition of OC.This also explains the important role of situational factors in defining and channelizing the affects of leadership style on the organizations.
Findings of study provide important managerial implications.Organizations may realize that an overall level OC may have different composition under different leadership styles.A higher organizational maturity may be an important factor that helps managers and leaders to pass one their influence to employees.The study may have limitations in terms of data and sample being collected from a certain region and may need further research in order to be generalized.
Fifteen statements were presented to employees to represent their strength of agreeableness and disagreeableness against each statement on a 5-point response scale ranging from 1

Table 2 .
Representative Leadership Styles

Table 4 .
Average rating of leaders assigned to them by their subordinates on all five representative leadership styles

Table 5 .
One-way Anova for comparison of means α=0.05 for all leaders except in the case of leader 6 and 10, i.e. at least one of the five leadership styles is different from the other four and the difference in means is significant at α=5%.Thus post-hoc test can be conducted to determine the dominant leadership style except in two cases of leader 6 and 10.The output of Post-Hoc analyses are shown in Table

Table 6 .
Post-hoc Analysis Assuming α=0.05, the results for each case are significant if P value is < α ** The contrast indicates that difference between the two styles in each case is the highest as compared to other possible comparisons with other styles. *

Table 7 .
Representative Leadership Style, Organizational Maturity and Composition of Organizational Commitment*