CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES
In sum, the main contribution of this study is to show that the relationship between managers’ and employees’ organizational commitment depends on both employee-perceived transformational leadership and congruence in manager-intentions and employee-perceptions of transformational leadership. Furthermore, the study suggests that the combination of measurements of organizational commitment and transformational leadership measured at different levels is useful for providing more nuanced answers to fundamental questions in the literature. In a broader perspective, the results confirm that “management matters” but also turn our attention to the complexity inherent in this often-expressed theorem. An important practical implication of the findings is that managers are in a position to affect their employees’ organizational commitment, but that being an organizationally committed manager is not enough. Managerial efforts to align with and share commitment with employees are vital. We have shown that transformational leadership affects the relationship between managers’ and employees’ organizational commitment and theoretically argued that this is because it clarifies and attenuates the managers’ organizational commitment, but we have also shown that adjusting the leadership style to a more transformational behavior is not likely to work if the managers are not also aware and sensitive to the attitudes and perceptions held by their employees. The evidence reported here thus emphasizes the importance of managers articulating and communicating organizational goals and values to their employees as well as establishing and sustaining a dialogue with them. Moreover the results imply that transformational leadership in relation to organizational commitment is not a question of “the more the better”, but just as much of “being on the same page.”
