Transformational leadership and emotional intelligence: allies in the development of organizational affective commitment from a multilevel perspective and time-lagged data

In the business context, models are needed to facilitate our understanding on the emergence of processes that transcend the individual level. In the case of affective organizational commitment, such models are even more necessary, due to the benefits associated with affective organizational commitment at the organizational level. From a time-lagged multilevel perspective, a model to explain the emergence of affective organizational commitment was tested by integrating the contribution of group processes. In this study, at two time points, 63 work teams from different organizations and sectors in Spain (n = 233 employees) were evaluated for transformational leadership, workgroup emotional intelligence and affective organizational commitment. The data were analyzed by a multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM). The results showed that supervisors’ transformational leadership style to both directly and indirectly (through workgroup emotional intelligence levels) mediates the development of affective organizational commitment at the individual level. The results are replicated at the team level but a direct relationship between transformational leadership and affective organizational commitment was not found. In conclusion, the results of this multilevel analysis of the relationships between transformational leadership, workgroup emotional intelligence, and affective organizational commitment contribute to the development of so-called “hybrid theories of homology” in the search for the generalization of relationships between variables across levels.