Transactional Leadership Style and Organization Commitment in Local Government: The Case Of mbarara Municipal Council

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study was to examine the influence of transactional leadership style and organization commitment among staff in Mbarara municipal council. The purpose of the study was to establish the influence of transactional leadership style on organizational commitment among staff of Mbarara municipal council. The study was conducted among 67 respondents who were employees of Mbarara municipality using the closed ended research questionnaires. The study was based on entirely a quantitative research design were data were collected from the respondents. The study findings reveal that transactional leadership style has contributions on affective commitment in Mbarara municipal council, the study conclude that transactional leadership can have an influence on organization commitment. The second objective findings reveal that transactional leadership style has a contribution on normative commitment in Mbarara municipal council, the influence was through organization leadership and leader’s motivation influence normative commitment. The results are in agreement with previous authors. On the third objective, the study The conclude that transactional leadership plays a great role on continuance commitment in the Mbarara Municipal council through binding employees to the organization and it does not seem at all unethical to me due to planning and leaders lead me to believe in the value of remaining loyal by my organization. The study overall conclude that there is need for irnprovin$ transactional leadership style to generate organization performance and commitment of the employees. The study results on the data collected the researcher recommend that there is need for the management to integrate transactional leadership with other modes of leadership to enhance the work values in the organization. The municipality leadership need to monitor behavior among the leaders to enhance the work effectiveness. The researcher further recommended that it was important for the municipal council to reduce laissez-faire leadership by designing performance procedures that promote professional performance guidelines that create a sense of responsibility to employees.