Organizational Commitment and Job Performance: Examining the Mediating and Moderating Roles of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour and Leadership Styles

Abstract

Though a significant number of studies in organizational behaviour literature have shown a positive relationship between affective organizational commitment and job performance, the findings of some studies indicate that the relationship varies. This highlights the presence of mediator and moderator variables. Our study seeks to clarify when and why affective organizational commitment is more or less related to job performance by investigating the mediating role of organizational citizenship behaviour and the moderating effect of leadership styles (transactional and transformational) on this relationship. Using a quantitative survey we sampled 556 workers from the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies in Ghana. The empirical results from hierarchical multiple linear regressions showed a positive relationship between affective commitment and job performance whilst OCB also mediated this relationship. The moderation analysis revealed that leadership styles (transformational and transactional) strengthened the positive relationship between affective commitment and job performance with transactional leadership the most effective leadership style. The outcome of our study suggest that, though affective commitment positively relates with job performance the relationship varies with the leader’s leadership style. We realized that within the local government context in Ghana, organizational commitment is more closely or strongly related to job performance when leaders (MMDCEs/mayors) transactional rather than transformational leadership is high. The practical contributions of this study are thoroughly discussed.