Influence of military commander’s leadership style on subordinate’s job satisfaction and organisational commitment

Studies have determined that job satisfaction level of military personnel is lower than employees of non-military organisation. Hardship such as long working hours and extended training or frequently being away from family for military missions require a strong sense of commitment to their organisation. In military, the commitment of its personnel is important beyond the reason of achievement in higher productivity, increase in retention of valuable talent. Strong commitment from soldiers in military often translates into their will to fight and preserve the sovereignty of their country. This study examined the direct effect of Military Commander’s transformational and transactional leadership style towards subordinate’s organisational commitment and the indirect effect of job satisfaction as a mediator variable. This research aims to determine whether the two different leadership styles have direct effect on the subordinate’s commitment or it is indirectly mediated by job satisfaction. A quantitative approach was taken using PLS SEM approach and reliable structured questionnaires as research instruments. A simple random sampling of 54 Junior officers and 331 other ranks from the Royal Signals Corp were used as respondents. From this research, we found that a direct effect of transformational leadership to organisational commitment was significant while no significance in transactional leadership’s direct effect to organisational commitment. It was also found that job satisfaction indirectly affects the relationship between transformational leadership, transactional leadership and organisational commitment. This study, it must be pointed out that this is one of the few research studies on military leadership style and its effect on the soldier’s job satisfaction and organisational commitment in the Malaysia. No empirical studies are available to aid in understanding the level of military leadership style practices and its effect on the soldier’s job satisfaction and commitment in Malaysian Army, especially in Royal Signals Corp. More studies in Malaysia replicated over samples covering a wide range of Armed Forces military personnel and geographical areas of military camp in Malaysia would help to enhance the understanding of Military Commander’s leadership style practices and its effect on soldier’s job satisfaction and commitment.