Leadership impact on organizational commitment: the mediating role of management control systems choice

The notion of organizational commitment has been intensively discussed in many fields of contemporary management research. Current literature in the field of leadership suggests that leadership styles of top management, i.e., CEOs and business unit heads, affect the level of commitment among middle- and lower-level managers. In a parallel vein, scholars in the field of management accounting and control argue that these effects are due to an organization’s management control system. This study is aimed at closing the gap between both strands of literature and examines how leadership and management control systems interact in the process of creating organizational commitment. Building on structural equation modeling, the study extends existing knowledge by analyzing whether the relations between top management’s leadership styles, i.e., initiating structure and consideration, and organizational commitment are mediated by the use of formal and informal management control elements. Based on a sample of 294 German firms, the results suggest that informal control elements, such as personnel and cultural controls, act as hinges through which top management is able to positively transmit leadership behaviors and affect the development of organizational commitment. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014