You can't make me! The role of self-leadership in enhancing organizational commitment and work engagement

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of self-leadership in enhancing work engagement through the mediating mechanisms of affective, normative and continuance organizational commitment.

Design/methodology/approach

Data collected from 258 transportation workers were examined in a parallel mediation model in PROCESS.

Findings

The results of these analyses suggest that the positive relationship between self-leadership and work engagement is partially mediated by affective commitment and normative commitment, but not by continuance commitment.

Research limitations/implications

The findings imply that organizational decision makers should implement practices designed to increase self-leadership in the workplace and enhance employee work engagement. These practices include empowering leadership, recruitment and selection of self-leading employees, and self-leadership training interventions. The study was subject to limitations common to attitudinal survey research.

Originality/value

This study responds calls to explore the mediating mechanisms through which self-leadership affects organizational outcomes and helps explain why self-leadership affects employee work engagement.

Citation

Knotts, K.G. and Houghton, J.D. (2021), "You can't make me! The role of self-leadership in enhancing organizational commitment and work engagement", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 42 No. 5, pp. 748-762. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-10-2020-0436