The Role of Employee Engagement in Mediating the Relationship between Leadership Style and Organizational Commitment: A Study of a Healthcare Institution in Kano State, Nigeria

The aim of this study therefore is to investigate the mediating role of employee engagement on the relationship between leadership style and organizational commitment in a selected healthcare institution in Kano State, Nigeria. It only shows that the said leadership initiatives still have not achieved the subject targets, as there is still a very huge gap between the effectiveness of the leadership activities that are undertaken in the specific organizational setting and the corresponding commitment level of the mentioned employees. Therefore, in the current study, the authors considered the employee demographic categorization in the healthcare setting, and employed a stratified random sampling approach to simultaneously distribute a quantitative self-administered questionnaire to 1,500 healthcare employees. The actual sample size derived out of the calculation made for the study was 385, while 320 sealed questionnaires were received and analyzed, thus making the response rate for the study equal to 83 per cent. In the present study, Statistical tools were in the form of Structural Equation Modeling and Confirmatory Factor Analysis to analyze the variables. It was evidenced from the literature review that leadership style positively influences organizational commitment mediated effectively by employee engagement. Of all the leadership styles mentioned in the study, transformational leadership was found to enhance the degree of commitment made by the employees and hence improving the organisational commitment. Engagement is also found to be the relational mechanism between leadership and commitment in the study. For that reason, there is a necessity in the adoption of transformational leadership practices and the development of the special protective measures to enhance the employee engagement level of the healthcare institutions in Kano State. Further, the leadership development initiatives should be run for continuity because when run for continuity, they help to sustain interest of the people working in the organization. Therefore, this study contributes to the existing understandings of leadership and employee engagement with focus on healthcare organisation to help the practitioners in improving organisational outcomes.