The emotional bond: vision and organizational commitment among high-tech employees

The new transformational leadership theories stress the emotional bond between leaders and followers, as opposed to the cognitive-calculative exchange emphasized by traditional transactional theories. However, very little empirical research has concentrated on the effects of transformational leaders on emotion-versus cognition-focused aspects of their followers' world. This study tested the relationships of vision, a common theme to all of the prominent new leadership theories, to the emotion-focused affective commitment (AC) versus the cognition-focused continuance commitment (CC) to the organization. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 183 high-tech employees. The quantitative results confirmed that vision formulation, content of social-oriented values, and assimilation were positively related to AC to the organization, and unrelated to CC. The qualitative evidences deepened our understanding on the positive relationships of a balanced transcendental and realistic content of the vision and a high level of sharedness in vision assimilation processes to affective organizational commitment.