Mediating role of Organizational Ambidexterity and Moderating role of Status Incongruence in Transformational Leadership and Subordinate Affective Organizational Commitment relationship

Abstract

Combining theory of status incongruence  (TSI) and Self-Determination Theory (SDT) theory, we examine how organizational ambidexterity affects transformational leaders’ ability to foster Subordinate Affective Organizational Commitment (SAOC) among their subordinates. From the sample of Eight hundred forty three Academic staffs from eighty three colleges and Universities in  selected parts of India, we found that Status Incongruence (SI) strengthens the positive relationship between Transformational Leadership (TL) and Subordinate Affective Organizational Commitment (SAOC) in such a way that the relationship will be highly positive when Status Incongruence is high than when it is low. We also found that the explanatory power of Subordinate Affective Organizational Commitment (SAOC) is not higher in the absence of Status Incongruence, as compared to, when it is present; suggesting at lower level of SI, the Transformational leader's effort to Subordinate Affective Organizational Commitment might have limited effect. After conducting 3-way interaction among Transformational leadership,  Organizational ambidexterity, predicting Subordinate Affective Organizational Commitment, the indirect effect of Organizational Ambidexterity (OA) was found to be positive and significant along with the positive direct effect of TL on SAOC, suggesting that OA partially mediates the relationship between TL and SAOC.  Furthermore Structural Ambidexterity had higher ratings as compared to Contextual Ambidexterity.