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Leadership
Distributed leadership and and
organizational commitment: organizational
commitment
moderating role of confidence
and affective climate
Sinda Ben Sedrine Received 14 February 2019
Revised 8 November 2019
Department of Management, 23 March 2020
Universite de Tunis Institut Superieur de Gestion de Tunis, Le Bardo, Tunisia 19 July 2020
24 August 2020
Accepted 13 October 2020
Amel Sabra Bouderbala
Department of Managment, Universite de la Manouba,
Institut Supérieur de Comptabilité et d’Administration des Affaires,
Manouba, Tunisia, and
Myryam Hamdi
Department of Management,
Universite de Tunis Institut Superieur de Gestion de Tunis, Le Bardo, Tunisia

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of distributed leadership on organizational
commitment and the role of trust and open group climate as moderator variables in this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach – To test the conceptual model and research hypotheses empirically,
the authors collected data based on an investigation over a sample of 318 engineers in the Information
Technology telecommunication sector in Tunisia. The results were analyzed using factor analysis and
structural equation modeling.
Findings – The results show a significant and positive impact of the support function, of the participation in
decision-making and cooperation on organizational commitment. The authors find evidence for the existence
of a positive moderating effect of trust and affective climate at the level of the causal link between distributed
leadership and organizational commitment dimensions.
Research limitations/implications – These results provide useful indications for managers within the
framework of leadership style that is more appropriate to the group’s proper functioning. Throughout this
work, managers will know that distributed leadership is adapted to create a social climate based on dialogue
and trust, an essential element of distributed leadership. Supervision and authority should give up a coercive
vision in a more cooperative and constructive approach. Coordination should be founded on a horizontal and
transversal vision of the organization.
Originality/value – Distributed leadership is increasingly seen as a key vehicle for firms’ improvement and
renewal. However, research on this concept was largely conducted in the field of education and health. Studies
dealing with small and medium-sized companies are rather scarce. There are not, to the best of the authors’
knowledge, any works in the Tunisian context because the majority of the reference studies are Anglo-Saxon.
The originality and value of this research lies in its anchoring in the context. Moreover, this study provides
empirical evidence of the importance of the role of the affective climate on organizational commitment. Indeed,
engagement is a behavioral and attitudinal indicator of organizational climate. This paper is intended to provide
a stimulus for exploring the distributed leadership area in terms of shaping thinking and designs for
organizational change to enhance organizational commitment in a highly digital world.
Keywords Trust, Support, Supervision, Cooperation, Organizational commitment,
European Business Review
Distributed leadership © Emerald Publishing Limited
0955-534X
Paper type Research paper DOI 10.1108/EBR-04-2018-0073
EBR 1. Introduction
Most of the management literature deals with power as an abstract concept rather than a
more concrete reality (Mintzberg, 2003). This paper seeks to explain concretely, the effects of
shared power on the organizational behavior.
Indeed, this paper focuses on the distributed leadership as a new leadership perspective.
Such a concept came to light and was developed in the field of education since the nineties,
and it was reflected in encouraging employees’ participation in the different leadership
functions and in decision-making with the aim of collective action (Hatchuel, 2001) federated
around the organization’s objectives.
Mintzberg (2003) already highlighted the role of the leader who does not seek to force
obedience, but who is instead committed to establish a favorable work structure and a
professional climate within the organization. The increase of complexity and ambiguity led
to the emergence of new modes of responsibility, interdependence and coordination (Gronn,
2002). This makes the different theories of behavioral and situational traits leadership not
adapted to the increasingly complex organizational reality. These theories, in majority, are
functionalist and do not highly favor participative and flexible work structures and ignore
the existence of leadership dynamics which stimulate the frequent change of the leader
behaviors (Barry, 1991).
Gronn (2002) criticized the “centrism–leader” and the concentration of power and
influence in the hands of one and only leader. He aroused the interest of researchers in
management to develop a more appropriate leadership style to the groups’ good functioning.
These critics and this awareness are very legitimate, as with globalization when
companies tend, more and more, to adopt a non-hierarchical and collaborative structure,
whereby responsibilities and powers shall be distributed in a more pragmatic way in
response to organizational objectives. Thus, the heroic leadership model becomes obsolete
and new forms of leadership have emerged. Indeed, Ancona et al. (2007) have evoked the
concept of “incomplete leadership” which puts an end to the complete leader myth and
which consists in strengthening expertise, creativity and commitment by practicing it on the
whole organizational structure (Stoten, 2015). Hence, the objective of this article lies in
presenting distributed leadership as a new management alternative with leaders at the top
and everywhere within the organization to meet organizational challenges (Dansereau,
2016).
Spillane (2006) stated that distributed leadership is a practice distributed over leaders,
followers and their situation; and incorporates the activities of multiple groups of
individuals. This implies a social distribution of leadership, where the leadership function is
stretched over a number of individuals and the task is accomplished through the interaction
of multiple leaders.
What we clearly know about distributed leadership is that it is not individual, but
collaborative (Wilmore, 2007) and, in general, there is evidence of the benefit of distributed
leadership (Carson et al., 2007; Friedrich et al., 2009). More than this, the workplace
organizational characteristics (e.g. leadership) are believed to have an impact on employees’
organizational commitment (Avolio et al., 2004; Pundt et al., 2006; Thomas et al., 2005).
Researchers have shown that there is a positive relationship between the employees’
organizational commitment and organizational leadership practices (Meyer and Allen, 1997;
Nguni et al., 2006). Organizational commitment is defined as the relative strength of an
individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization (Mowday et al.,
1979). Atas and Ayik (2017) state that it is undeniable that organizational commitment
affects distributed leadership.
 The present study aims to explore the relationship between distributed leadership and Leadership
organizational commitment. This research is likely to overcome the empirical gap noticed in and
the literature. Moreover, this study aims to provide empirical evidence on the importance of
the moderating effect of trust and affective climate at the level of the causal link between
organizational
distributed leadership and organizational commitment dimensions. commitment
The originality and value of this research is that it is anchored in the context. Indeed,
according to Firestone and Pennell (1993), the effect of collaborative decision-making on
organizational commitment may change significantly depending on some conditions.
Fletcher and Käufer (2003) claim that shared forms of leadership are portrayed as a
dynamic, multidirectional and collective activity embedded in a specific context. In our case,
the Tunisian context – particularly the Information Technology sector – requires a high
level of competence.
This research is, therefore, in line with the earlier works such as Avolio and Bass (1995)
as well as Pearce and Sims (2002) that focused on the leadership team as a whole.
Indeed, the distributed leadership concept was much studied in the field of education,
especially within primary, secondary and higher education establishments (Harris, 2004,
2007, 2008, 2011; Spillane et al., 2004, 2008, 2011; Bennett et al., 2003; Bolden, 2011). It has
also been mobilized in the field of health (Currie and Lockett, 2011; Buchanan et al., 2007).
However, few are the studies that dealt with small and medium-sized companies (Jain and
Jeppesen, 2014).
Furthermore, our research seems legitimate based on the fact that whether in the field of
education or health, works on distributed leadership are based on a qualitative approach
(Jain and Jeppesen, 2014). For instance, 823 articles were published on this theme, with 21
empirical studies including only 7 quantitative studies (Tian et al., 2015).
So far, there have been no works shedding light on the Tunisian context because the
studies we invoked dealt mainly with Anglo-Saxon contexts in particular. This makes
distributed leadership a recent and meaningful concept that needs to be approached
differently in other contexts. This article, which deals with the Tunisian context, bridges
this empirical gap by proposing a distributed leadership quantitative approach which is in
line with the works of Hulpia et al. (2009b, 2011) and Hulpia and Devos (2010).
Our research model is based on the study of Hulpia et al. (2011) [1], who define distributed
leadership through the functions “supervision” and “support,” as well as “the participation
in decision-making” and “the cooperation within the team.” However, first, a literature
review is necessary to identify the distributed leadership concept and, in a more succinct
way, that of organizational commitment.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we determine the different relationships
tracing the conceptual model and we make assumptions specific to it. In Section 3, we justify
the methodological and epistemological approaches. In Sections 4 and 5, we present and then
discuss the testing results and give several theoretical and managerial implications.

2. Conceptual model and hypothesis

2.1 Effects of distributed leadership on organizational commitment
First and foremost, it is useful to remember the notion of leadership in its general perception.
Silva (2016, p. 4) defines it as an “interactive influence process which is reflected when, in a
given context, some people accept someone as their leader in order to achieve common
objectives.”
Rose and Gordon (2015) likened distributed leadership to “shared leadership.” To this
end, many authors (Bolden, 2011; Harris, 2004; Woods et al., 2004) mobilized distributed
leadership and shared leadership as two interchangeable notions.
EBR Benne and Sheats (1948) are the first authors who have considered that no distinction can
be done between leadership and membership functions; and between leader roles and
members’ roles. Groups can work with various degrees of leadership and adhesion functions
diffusion. Such diffusion requires a “multilaterally shared responsibility.” In this vein, Gibb
(1958) evokes leadership as a group function, a concept applied on a group structure to
depict a situation in which some people interact while enrolling their will, their feeling and
their insight to direct and control others in the pursuit of common purposes. Accordingly,
we assimilate this distributed leadership emerging social interaction system to a collective
action where leaders and followers are perceived as collaborators in the accomplishment of
group tasks (Gronn, 2000). Distributed leadership is conceived as an alternative which
favors sharing and mobilizing expertise at all levels of organization to generate more
possibilities of change and improvement (Harris, 2011). It is “leadership by expertise” rather
than leadership by role or by years of experience (Harris, 2008). This type of distributed
leadership requires high levels of trust, transparency and mutual respect.
Distributed leadership is also defined as a set of roles and behaviors that can be
separated, shared and used in a sequential and concomitant way. When there are many
leaders in the same team, each member ensures a complementary leadership role (Barry,
1991). As a result, a joint activity product emerges from multi-member organizational
groups acting within the framework of a concerted action (Gronn, 2002), which is based on
situational and contextual competences (Rose and Gordon, 2015).
Distributed leadership rests on essential preconditions such as coordination, support and
supervision functions, participation in decision-making as well as cooperation.
Coordination encompasses the staff, the materials, the trajectories, the tasks and the
necessary results to complete the activities. It “includes conception, work out, allocation,
surveillance and follow-up of an organization technical core performance” (Gronn, 2002,
p. 433). It is perceived as a management process of dependencies between activities (Malone
and Crowston, 1994).
Interdependence between employees generates mutual strengthening and a reduction of
errors probability at the level of decision (Gronn, 2002). It is characteristic of the
complementarity, interaction and coordination degree within a team. It is also a source of
motivation and efficiency at work (Campion et al., 1993).
Support culture is a culture supporting leadership, made of collaboration, partnership
and positive relationships based on trust (Muijs and Harris, 2006). Support structure
strengthens leadership (Muijs and Harris, 2006) and the distributed leadership (Woods et al.,
2004), because these structural arrangements (e.g. business trips, meetings) give the
opportunity to members to participate in decision-making (Woods et al., 2004). Furthermore,
Chan and Mak (2014) showed that the more the leader ensures a psychological support by
paying attention to the subordinates’ emotions and by developing the attributes of each one
of them, the more the subordinates are inclined to self-sacrificing and sharing their leaders’
values. This observation is particularly true in the Tunisian culture, as social actors
emphasize the importance of solidarity which provides a certain sense of protection and
security (Amri, 2007). This is likely to have a positive effect on engagement. Thus, we
propose the following hypothesis:

H1. Distributed leadership support function has a positive impact on employees’

organizational commitment.
As for distributed leadership supervision function, it is born with the interaction between a
supervisor and a surveyed person. Its aim is to develop work, knowledge and human
competences while discussing work issues (Ollila, 2008). Supervision can have both positive Leadership
and negative impacts on organizational commitment (Hulpia and Devos, 2010). and
Firestone and Pennell (1993) state that leaders, while ensuring formal or informal
supervision, can strengthen employees’ organizational commitment through the increase of
organizational
feedback which constitute an efficient means of control. On the other hand, when feedback commitment
become less direct, organizational commitment decreases.
In addition, Parry (1997) noted that the supervision nature has changed. Indeed, the
leading team should supervise employees by building flexible working teams where
involvement and autonomy present a very high degree. This supervision policy favors
employees’ commitment.
Stoeva (2010), while studying the relationship between supervision type and organizational
commitment, showed that employees express an affective commitment and a continuity
commitment toward the supervisors who recognize their potentials, communicate with them and
help them solve their problems while developing their competences. Yet, we moderate this point
by emphasizing that Smida and Latiri (2004) consider that Tunisians still accept the idea of
hierarchy but prefer to keep an average distance. We develop, therefore, the ensuing hypothesis:

H2. Distributed leadership supervision function has a positive impact on employees’

organizational commitment.
With regard to decision-making participation, Thompson et al. (2017) show that the
involvement of subordinates in the decision-making process is likely to inspire trust,
promote credibility, help develop a favorable relationship with the leader and generate the
pride of belonging to the organization. A participation sufficient to decision-making leads to
the employees’ involvement (Appelbaum et al., 2013). It helps improve satisfaction at work,
performance, productivity, managers and employees’ involvement (Cotton et al., 1988;
Wagner, 1994; Wagner and LePine, 1999). This interdependence among employees
generates mutual reinforcement and reduces the probability of decision errors (Gronn, 2002).
Wickramasinghe and Wickramasinghe (2012), in their study in Sri Lanka, found that
participation in decision-making has a positive influence on both engagement and
satisfaction. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

H3. Participation in decision-making exerts a positive influence on employees’

organizational commitment.
As for cooperation, it is the fruit of joint actions, which within the framework of a distributed
leadership, allows “ forging a concerted dynamic representing the sum of individual
contributors” (Bennett et al., 2003, p. 7). Gronn (2000, 2002) refers to the concerted action that
is the product of the joint activity. Indeed, people work together, coordinate with each other
and bring together their initiatives, efforts and expertise to produce more energy than the
sum of their individual actions.
Distributed leadership is based on the expertise complementarity and needs collective
sharing of a common vision and resources. Members can coordinate by building a formally
structured or ad hoc team aiming at specific projects implementation. The perceptions of
shared responsibility within a cohesive team favor the importance of social relations by
developing positive emotions and feelings which strengthen organizational commitment
(Thye et al., 2014). Hulpia and Devos (2010) define effective team cooperation as the open
expression of the feeling of mutual trust between members and open communication. Hulpia
et al. (2011) have shown that teachers’ organizational commitment is strongly linked to
cooperation between people. Hence, we formulate the following hypothesis:
EBR H4. Cooperation within the leading team positively influences organizational
commitment.

2.2 Distributed leadership and organizational commitment: trust as a moderator

All these prerequisites require a minimum of trust that Mayer et al. (1995) define as the fact
of accepting the possibility of being vulnerable in a transaction, where the parts should be
willing to depend on each other and to take risks. Sabel (1993) defines trust as the confidence
between two parties with the understanding that no party will exploit the other’s
vulnerability. Trust creates an opportunity to deal with the complexity of the world
(Luhmann, 1979). It represents how much risk we are willing to accept in exchange for
benefits from interactions with others. Trust is also viewed as the propensity of an
individual who can depend on another person to complete a task without being monitored
(Mayer et al., 1995).
Trust has been viewed as an imperative element for organizational success (Meyerson
et al., 2006) and as an organizational social capital component (Atkinson and Butcher, 2003).
It is an essential condition for distributed leadership. Indeed, leadership tasks depend on
trust to such an extent that the employees are hardly afraid of their manager’s punishment
when they are facing a failure and are sure to be gratified for their efforts if they do their job
well (Jønsson et al., 2016). Formally or informally coordinated groups can succeed if their
relationships are based on mutual trust (Woods et al., 2004).
Effective distributed leadership empowers and cultivates trust in people. As a result,
people are motivated to assume more responsibilities (Yukl, 2002). Trust enables
cooperative, altruistic and extra-role behavior (Fukuyama, 1995). Trust fosters a high level
of information exchange (Li et al., 2010; Malhotra and Murnighan, 2002; Casimir et al., 2012).
Moreover, trust is an essential component of successful and efficient teamwork (Moreland
and Levine, 2002; Salas et al., 2008; Berry, 2011; Driskell and Salas, 1992; Erdem and Ozen,
2003; Gibson and Cohen, 2003).
Furthermore, Kuo (2013) asserts that trust is the basis of generating commitment among
members of an organization for managing knowledge. Trust may, at least partially,
represent the long-term effects of reciprocity in high-quality leadership increasing
employees’ commitment to remain in the relationship with their leader and the organization
(Brower et al., 2009). We can, therefore, in the light of these observations, suggest the
following hypothesis:

H5. Trust moderates positively the relationship between (a) support function, (b)
supervision function, (c) participation in decision-making, (d) cooperation within the
team and (e) commitment of employees.
These distributed leadership prerequisites have a positive effect on an organization (Spillane
et al., 2008; Harris, 2011; Harris, 2004; Griffin, 1995; Leithwood et al., 2008; Muijs and Harris,
2006).

2.3 Distributed leadership and organizational commitment: affective climate as a moderator

Organizational commitment is a crucial variable that has received researchers’ special
attention (Yahaya and Ebrahim, 2016). Indeed, organizational commitment is linked to
organizational results (Stites and Michael, 2011) because it leads to positive effects on job
performance, turnout and employee satisfaction (Meyer et al., 2002). It is defined as the
degree of affinity that an individual translates by their will to remain in an organization
(Williams and Bhanugopan, 2016). It is also an “identification and participation force of the
individual to the specific organization” (Porter et al., 1974, p. 604). Organizational Leadership
commitment, ultimately, reflects the extent to which an individual identifies to an and
organization and their degree of attachment to organizational objectives. Such an
attachment rests on a fund of affectivity and emotion of group members (Kanter, 1968). We
organizational
assimilate this activity background to affective climate, characterized by heat, support, commitment
sincerity, acceptance and enthusiasm (Tse et al., 2008); in other terms, the interaction
atmosphere between team players (Choi et al., 2003). Emotions represent an important point
in management practice (Thévenet, 1999, VA Hoorebeke, 2008) and the leaders have an
important emotional agility where humor and open communication energize the work teams
in a committed and efficient way (Sharma and Bhatnagar, 2017). Accordingly, emotions,
feelings and shared and communicated moods strengthen employees’ organizational
commitment (Sharma and Bhatnagar, 2017).
Furthermore, organizational climate is one of the organizational factors that have a
significant impact on staff commitment (Bahrami et al., 2016). It is, indeed, considered as an
organizational construct (Ashkanasy and Ashton-James, 2007) and represents our study’s
contribution. Organizational climate is one of the main concepts in organizational behavior.
Engagement is a behavioral and attitudinal indicator of organizational climate. As a matter
of fact, engaged employees express this bond through their physical, cognitive and
emotional behavior while performing their roles in the organization (Kahn, 1990; Gruman
and Saks, 2011). In this way, they exert higher levels of energy performing their work; and
when asked about who they are, they describe the work they do and their satisfaction with
the work. Hence, engaged employees are better job performers (Gruman and Saks, 2011).
A suitable organizational climate helps to inspire innovation and organization and has a
useful function to achieve the organization’s objectives (Bahrami et al., 2016).
The organizational climate is reflected in the organization’s objective to develop its staff
or employees by providing good working environments and conditions as well as assisting
and supporting them so that they can achieve job satisfaction. All of these factors enhance
staff commitment toward the organization (Suliman and Isles, 2000). In this vein, many
studies have shown that organizational climate has positive effects on organizational
commitment (Abdullah and Hasan, 2006). Specifically, organizational climate variables (e.g.
motivation, decision-making, communication, leadership and goal setting) are significant
predictors of organizational commitment (Warsi et al., 2009; Lok et al., 2005).
We put, therefore, the following hypothesis:

H6. Affective climate positively moderates the relationship (a) support function, (b)
supervision function, (c) participation in decision-making, (d) cooperation within the
team and (d) commitment of employees.
Ultimately, our challenge in this article is to highlight – within the Tunisian context and
through this quantitative study – the positive relationship that exists between distributed
leadership and organizational commitment.
Yiing and Bin Ahmad (2009) asserted this state of affairs, and Hulpia et al. (2011)
specified, in the same vein, that distributed leadership is prerequisite to organizational
commitment. Based on the above literature review, we can put forward our conceptual model
accompanied with its hypotheses: Figure 1 illustrates the research variables relationships.

3. Method
3.1 Data collection and respondents’ profile
The data on which this article is founded were collected in the framework of an online
survey with a convenience sample made of 318 observations (including 84% males and 16%
EBR females; the average age of respondents is 41 years) over a period of three months going
from March 2017 to June of the same year. This non-probability sampling method makes it
possible to precisely select the elements of the sample according to the criteria set by the
researcher (Royer and Zarlowski, 1999). The questionnaire was addressed to engineers
working in the Tunisian Information Technology sector. A total of 91% of the respondents
work for Orange, the second private telecommunication operator in Tunisia with a market
share of 23.3%; 8.8% of the respondents work for Tunisie Télécom, Tunisia’s second largest
mobile operator and leader internet service provider, with 41.1% of market share. Among
the engineers participating in the study, 37 (11.6%) have 1–5 years of working experience
(professional seniority), 71 (22.3%) have 6–10 years of working experience, 179 (56.3%) have
11–15 years of working experience and 31 (9.7%) have 16 and more years of working
experience. The choice of this sector relies mainly on the definition of distributed leadership
which assumes that team members are endowed with a high level of competence and
knowledge allowing them to work in collaboration and to share power and decisions. In this
sector, projects are often important and complex to manage because they require, in most
cases, that work be divided and done collectively. Teams operating in this sector bring
together their projects, thanks to a leadership specific to their way of working, namely, a
distributed leadership within the framework of a collective action (Hatchuel, 2001).
To estimate the existence of a non-response bias, we followed the procedure proposed by
Armstrong and Overton (1977) and validated that the last respondents do not respond
differently from the former. Because the study data come from the same source, we wanted
to verify the existence of the common variance bias because of this method (Podsakoff et al.,
2003). To do so, we performed the Harman test. The first factor of the factor analysis carried
out on all the variables of the study returns only 22.894%. This result suggests the absence
of a problem related to the common method variance.

3.2 Measures
Moreover, we used and adapted a certain number of measurement scales of literature into
management which proved their good psychometric quality to evaluate the variables. To
this end, we relied on measurement scales (Hupia et al.2011) to measure support,
supervision, cooperation within the leading team, participation in decision-making and
organizational commitment, and those of Robinson and Rousseau (1994) and Choi et al.
(2003) to appreciate respectively trust and affective climate. The score of each item varies
from 1 to 5 on Likert scale. The questionnnaire is provided in the Appendix.

Distributed leadership

Quality of support function

Trust

Quality of supervision
function Organizationa
l commitment
Participation in decision-
making
Affective
Figure 1. Cooperation within the team
climate
Conceptual model
3.3 Reliability and validity of measurement instruments Leadership
The results were generated by SPSS and AMOS 23 software. Within the framework of SPSS and
exploratory factor analysis, EFA followed by Cronbach’s alpha enabled to identify, purify
and evaluate the reliability of tested dimensions. This major component analysis used with
organizational
Varimax rotation, as recommended by Hair et al. (1998), enabled us to eliminate the items commitment
whose factorial contributions revealed more than 50% weak items (factorial contribution
<0.40). The results also presented satisfying factor charges for each construction (>0.5).
The internal coherence of the different constructions is also acceptable in the light of
Cronbach’s alpha values between 0.823 and 0.898 (Table 1). This index is higher than 0.7, as
recommended by Nunnally (1978). Afterwards, a confirmatory factor analysis was carried
out via AMOS 23 software. First, we examined fit indexes of each measure model variable
which were revealed to conform with critical acceptance level (Hair et al., 1998). Joreskog
Rho coefficient was calculated to strengthen the good results of Cronbach’s alpha index.
Joreskog Rho values go from 0.823 to 0.901 (Table 1) respecting the threshold of 0.7 and even
0.8 defined by Fornell and Larcker (1981). The structural analysis finally allowed testing
causal relation significance.
The results of Table 2 reveal that convergent validity is verified for all the constructions.
The Rho of convergent validity is higher than the minimum threshold of 0.5 for each
dimension obtained (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). The conditions of discriminant validity
were respected given that extracted average variance is higher than the square of the
correlation between the latent variables of measurement model as advocated by Fornell and
Larcker (1981). For this purpose, we can conclude that the dimensions obtained are weak
and valid.

4. Results
To check the validity of our research model, we modeled the structural equations using
AMOS 23 software. We adopted the Sauer et al. (1993) approach to test the moderating role
of trust and emotional climate at the level of causal relationship between each distributed
leadership dimension and organizational commitment. The technique was preceded by a
classification of dynamic cloud enabling to segment respondents into two groups for each
moderating variable, whether the level is low or high for each of the two groups. The
structural model adjustment indexes, integrating all variables, were first examined. Indeed,
Table 3 reveals that the variables distributed leadership, trust, affective climate and
organizational commitment present a good adjustment.
In addition, Table 4 shows that the structural model presents a good adjustment. Indeed,
absolute, incremental and of parsimony indexes respect the thresholds recommended by

Variables No. of items Explained variance in (%) Cronbach’s alpha

SUPP 4 17.290 0.847

SUPV 3 13.988 0.823
PDM 4 16.923 0.839
COOP 5 21.241 0.875
OC 5 71.454 0.898
TRU 4 74.798 0.886
Table 1.
AC 5 68.638 0.881
Factorial analysis
Notes: SUPP, support; SUPV, supervision; PPD, participative decision-making; COOP, cooperation within and reliability of
the leadership team; OC, organizational commitment; TRU, trust; AC, affective climate constructs
EBR Variables Convergent validity (CV) Root of rho CV Discriminant validity

SUPP 0.582 0.92086915 0.582 > d 2 (sup-supv) = 0.041

0.582 > d 2 (sup-ppd) = 0.025
0.582 > d 2 (sup-coop) = 0.052
SUPV 0.608 0.90719347 0.608 > d 2 (supv-sup) = 0.041
0.608 > d 2 (supv-ppd) = 0.20
0.608 > d 2 (supv-coop) = 0.084
PPD 0.565 0.91596943 0.565 > d 2 (ppdsup) = 0.025
0.565 > d 2 (ppd-supv) = 0.20
0.565 > d 2 (ppd-coop) = 0.319
COOP 0.878 0.93701654 0.878 > d 2 (coop-sup) = 0.052
0.878 > d 2 (coop-supv) = 0.084
0.878 > d 2 (coop-ppd) = 0.319
Table 2. OC 0.646 0.80374125
TRU 0.670 0.81853527
Verification of
AC 0.626 0.79120161
convergent validity
and discriminant Notes: SUPP, support; SUPV, supervision; PPD, participative decision-making; COOP, cooperation within
validity the leadership team; OC, organizational commitment; TRU, trust; AC, affective climate

Absolute indices Incremental indices

Fit indices x 2/df GFI AGFI RMR RMSEA NFI CFI

Threshold <3 >0.90 >0.90 0 <0.08 >0.90 >0.90

Values DL 1.980 0.926 0.902 0.052 0.056 0.949 0.959
Values OC 6.261 0.961 0.882 0.03 0.129 0.967 0.972
Values AC 1.174 0.994 0.977 0.006 0.023 0.994 0.999
Corr value 1.882 0.991 0.971 0.042 0.053 0.991 0.996

Notes: GFI, goodness-of-fit index; AGFI, adjusted goodness of fit index; RMR, root mean square residual;
Table 3. RMSEA, root mean square error of approximation; CFI, comparative fit index; NFI, normed fit index; Corr
Adjustment indexes value, correlation value; DL, distributed leadership; OC, organizational commitment; AC, affective climate

Incremental
Absolute indices indices
Fit indices x 2/df GFI AGFI RMR RMSEA NFI CFI

Threshold <3 >0.90 >0.90 0 <0.08 >0.90 >0.90

Observed values 1.980 0.929 0.902 0.052 0.056 0.921 0.959
Table 4.
Fit indices of Notes: GFI, goodness-of-fit index; AGFI, adjusted goodness of fit index; RMR, root mean square residual;
structural model RMSEA, root mean square error of approximation; CFI, comparative fit index; NFI, normed fit index

Bentler and Bonett (1980), Chin and Todd (1995) and Hair et al. (1998). Based on these
results, we can conclude that the structural model has a very good adjustment.
The structural model allows testing the research hypotheses. The testing of hypotheses
was performed by examining regression coefficients and their degree of significance. The
results of Table 5 show that support function, participation in decision-making and Leadership
cooperation within the team have a positive and significant impact at the threshold of 1% on and
organizational commitment. H1, H3 and H4 are thus confirmed. The performance review
also reveals that the effect of supervision function on organizational commitment is positive
organizational
and nonsignificant, which rejects H2. commitment
The analysis of trust and affective climate moderating effects on the relationship
between distributed leadership different dimensions and organizational commitment was
realized by multi-group analyses. The latter have the advantage of being simple and
efficient. Groups are made according to different moderating variable levels through the
dynamic cloud classification. As for trust moderating variable, the dynamic cloud
classification reveals that convergence was affected since the fifth iteration, which has given
rise to two groups. The first group is made of 78% of the sample and operates in a working
environment where a high level of trust rules, whereas the second group represents only
32% of observations and represents respondents operating in a low-trust environment.
Thus, Table 6 illustrates the results of dynamic cloud classification.
Moreover, the results of Chi-squared test difference are significant at the risk of 5%
(Chi-squared test = 26,765; p = 4.42%) and prove the existence of trust moderating effect at the
level of causal relationship between distributed leadership dimensions and organizational
commitment. Consequently, Table 7 illustrates the multi-group analysis results.

Causal link RS CR Hypotheses validation

H1: SUPP ! OC 0.107 2.011* Confirmed

H2: SUPV ! OC 0.057 0.940(ns) Rejected
H3: PDM ! OC 0.156 2.151* Confirmed
H4: COOP ! OC 0.528 7.081* Confirmed

Notes: CR, critical ratio; RS, standardized regression; ns, nonsignificant: when p > 0.05; *p < 0.01; SUPP,
support; SUPV, supervision; PPD, participative decision-making; COOP, cooperation within the leadership Table 5.
team; OC, organizational commitment Hypotheses testing

Groups High trust level Low trust level

Sample percentage 78% (215 observations) 32% (103observations)

Iteration Iteration history

Class 1 Class 2
1 1.846 2.837
2 0.079 0.185
3 0.088 0.174
4 0.011 0.022
5 0.000 0.000
Convergence was reached at the fifth iteration and Table 6.
gave us two individuals groups Segmentation of
Center of the final classes
respondents
High trust level Low trust level
TRUST 2 4.12 2.52 according to the level
TRUST 3 4.22 2.46 of trust intensity:
TRUST 4 4.26 2.60 results of dynamic
TRUST 5 4.05 2.76 cloud classification
EBR The results show that the impact of the support function and supervision function on
organizational commitment is not significant at the risk of 5% for each one of the two
groups. It should also be emphasized that trust-moderating effect remains insignificant for
the relationship of support and supervision functions on organizational commitment.
Therefore, both H5(a) and H5(b) are not confirmed.
By contrast, participation in decision-making and cooperation within the team
cooperation have a more important impact on organizational commitment when trust is
high; this impact remains less important when the trust level weakens. Thus, trust
moderates positively the relationship between these two dimensions of distributed
leadership and organizational commitment. Hence, we can confirm H5(c) and H6(d).
Concerning affective climate, the technique of dynamic clouds reveals that convergence was
reached from the fourth iteration giving rise to two groups. The first group represents the
respondents operating in a strong affective climate and constitutes 85% of the sample, whereas
the second group represents only 15% of observations and designs respondents operating in a
low affective climate. Thus, Table 8 illustrates the results of dynamic cloud classification.
Moreover, the results of Chi-squared test difference are significant at the threshold of 5%
(Chi-squared test = 26, 687; p = 4.51%) and prove the existence of the affective climate

Group 1: low Group 2: high

Groups trust level trust level
Impact RS p RS p

H5(a): SUPP ! OC 0.150 0.095(ns) 0.130 0.280(ns)

H5(b): SUPV ! OC 0.058 0.435(ns) 0.044 0.735(ns)
H5(c): PDM ! OC 0.094 0.302(ns) 0.296 0.039
H5(d): COOP ! OC 0.247 0.016 0.317 0.000
Table 7. Notes: RS, standardized regression; ns, nonsignificant when p > 0.05; SUPP, support; SUPV, supervision;
Comparison between PPD, participative decision-making; COOP, cooperation within the leadership team; OC, organizational
groups commitment

Groups Low emotional climate High emotional climate

Percentage of sample 85% (271 observations) 15% (47observations)

Iteration Iterations history

Class 1 Class 2
1 2.600 2.489
2 0.137 0.742
3 0.069 0.340
4 0.000 0.000
Convergence was reached at the fourth iteration
Table 8. and gave us two groups
Segmentation of Center of final classes
Low emotional climate High emotional climate
respondents
Affective Climate 1 4.07 2.68
according emotional Affective Climate 2 4.29 2.57
climate intensity: Affective Climate 3 4.08 2.72
results of dynamic Affective Climate 4 3.88 2.66
cloud classification Affective Climate 5 3.94 2.68
moderating effect at the level of causal relationship between distributed leadership Leadership
dimensions and organizational commitment. As a consequence, the review of Table 9 allows and
us to specify the nature of this moderating effect by making a comparison between causal
relations at the level of each obtained group.
organizational
The results of multi-group analysis show that support, participation in decision- commitment
making and cooperation within the team functions have an important and significant
impact on organizational commitment when the affective climate level is high, whereas
it is less important and insignificant at the threshold of 5% when this latter is low.
Thus, the impact of “support” function, participation in decision-making and
cooperation within the team functions on organizational commitment increases with
the improvement of the affective climate level. Consequently, we can conclude that the
affective climate level positively moderates the effect of these dimensions on
organizational commitment. This is what allows us to confirm the hypotheses H6(a),
H6(c) and H6(d). On the other hand, the impact of supervision function is not
significant at the threshold of 5% for each group. The results of Table 9 show that the
effect of affective climate on the relationship between supervision function and
organizational commitment remains insignificant.

5. Discussions and conclusions

In this paper, we find evidence that participation in decision-making has a positive
impact on organizational commitment because it inspires a very high degree of trust and
satisfaction at work. This is consistent with the previous works (Wickramasinghe and
Wickramasinghe, 2012; Thompson et al., 2017) which concord that participation in
decision-making promotes trust, develops favorable relationships and inspires
satisfaction at work.
The same applies to cooperation within the leading team. Indeed, by analogy to the
studies carried out by Hulpia et al. (2011) in the field of education, our results reveal that the
cohesion between group members, role clarity, mutual trust and open communication
generate a collaborative working atmosphere favorable to employees’ commitment. We
show that the more coherent the teams, the more important the degrees of communication
and collaboration; and hence the stronger the employees’ attachment toward their
organization. These results are in line with the previous results of Vanhove and Herian
(2015), Thye et al. (2014), Markova and Perry (2014), Hulpia and Devos (2010), Hulpia et al.
(2011), Leithwood et al. (2008), Gronn (2002) and Spillane (2006). They confirm that the
concerted action, the joint activity and the practical aspect of distributed leadership are
crucial to employees’ commitment.

Group 1: low Group 2: high

Groups affective climate affective climate
Impact RS p RS p

H6(a): SUPP ! OC 0.012 0.949(ns) 0.108 0.050

H6(b): SUPV ! OC 0.132 0.519(ns) 0.043 0.492(ns)
H6(c): PDM ! OC 0.287 0.296(ns) 0.223 0.003
H6(d): COOP ! OC 0.459 0.085(ns) 0.524 0.000

Notes: RS, standardized regression; ns, nonsignificant when p > 0.05; SUPP, support; SUPV, supervision; Table 9.
PPD, participative decision-making; COOP, cooperation within the leadership team; OC, organizational Comparison between
commitment groups
EBR However, our results do not allow us to confirm a significant relationship between
supervision function and organizational commitment even if supervision aims at motivating
employees to behave in a proper way. Instead, our research shows that supervision has an
adverse effect on engineers’ attitude reducing their commitment toward the company.
Therefore, we are consistent with the results of Zeffane (1995) and Merchant and Van der
Stede (2003).
Besides, direct supervision and observation hinder employees’ autonomy because
they convey a feeling of lack of trust and disrespect translated by a low commitment
level. Such a negative association between close supervision and commitment level is
also identified by many researchers (Merchand and Van der sted, 2003; Ramaswami,
1996; Su et al., 2009). These results remain understandable in view of the leadership
implemented by the company that encourages employees to be creative, to take
initiatives and be autonomous in the perspective of increased “power-making.” This
result may not be that surprising, though, if we put it in the context of Tunisian culture.
Indeed, Smida and Latiri (2004) consider that Tunisians prefer to keep an average
distance in hierarchy. Tunisian culture is ambivalent in terms of the respect for hierarchy
(paternalism) and the affirmation of the equality of human beings (Muslim religion). It is
described by Zghal (1994) and Lassoued (2008) as the acceptance of hierarchy, but with
equal dignity and honor (Yousfi, 2014).
As far as moderating variables are concerned, we can prove that a high degree of trust
strengthens the relationship between participation in decision-making and organizational
commitment. Trust intervenes to strengthen links between the group members and to
facilitate decision-making within the team. The latter, nourished by this mutual trust, takes
a collective and relevant decision. Moreover, the higher the trust level, the more important
the effect of the participation in decision-making on commitment. This result corresponds to
what Handerson and Smith-King (2015) showed. According to these authors, trust remains a
prerequisite condition for a sustainable partnership between the company and its
employees, encouraging them to participate in decision-making and therefore to be engaged.
For this reason, we can confirm that trust is a relevant segmentation criterion in this context
of study because it generates two distinct levels of trust.
Likewise, we could show that trust positively moderates the relationship between
cooperation within the leading team and organizational commitment. We take leading
engineers as an example. They cooperate with each other with an important degree of trust
and live positive work experiences which favor their commitment to the company and allow
them to develop positive perceptions on the leading team. Such management helps fostering
positive attitudes within teams and depersonalizing orders to further value “the law of the
situation” (Plane, 2015).
However, our results state that trust exerts an insignificant effect between support
function and organizational commitment. This fulfillment is not that surprising, because the
trust-moderating role on this relationship is rare. Indeed, a distributed leadership creates
and develops a collective trust which may lead to stimulate employee involvement at work
and their commitment toward the company (Plane, 2015). The same applies to the
supervision function effect on organizational commitment which remains insignificant, no
matter the joining level of trust (Merchand and Van der sted, 2003).
We can validate the moderating effect of the affective climate on the link between
participation in decision-making and organizational commitment. Indeed, a support climate
makes the decision-making process more flexible. Participation in decision-making in an
environment of strong interactions between team players leads to the satisfaction and
commitment of team members. Besides, Handerson and Smith King state that
decision-making process requires a high degree of interactions so that individuals could be Leadership
involved in their collective works. and
Moreover, we can support the positive moderating role that affective climate plays on the
relationship between cooperation within the leading team and employees’ commitment.
organizational
Indeed, when the level of affective climate is high, the impact of cooperation between leaders commitment
on organizational commitment is positive and significant. This result converges with the
works of Wech et al. (1998) and Woods et al. (2004) who report that in the case where the
team is endowed with an interesting level of participation, communications and interactions
as well as positive feelings emerge to create stronger cooperation relationships and links
between organization members, which leads to a better employee commitment.
The most important contribution of the present article is that efforts to improve the
organizational climate can be a valuable strategy to improve organizational commitment.
The high affective climate fosters greater cooperation among members. Thus, leaders
should try to understand the organizational climate and its factors to increase their staff
organizational commitment. They can create a positive and desirable climate for staff to
increase their responsibility to remain with the organization, try to reach organizational
goals and create emotional attachment so that they enjoy staying at the organization. In
addition, because change starts from the leaders, these should be familiar with the
organizational goals and be committed to achieve them to be good examples for staff and to
create influence and motivation with their behavior. These findings are consistent with
those of Bahrami et al. (2016).
Indeed, supervisors support engagement through elements of performance management
by establishing a foundation of trust and empowerment; providing employees with
challenging and meaningful work; establishing clear performance goals; communicating
regularly with employees about their goals and performance; providing ongoing coaching
and feedback; recognizing and rewarding achievements; conducting performance appraisals
that employees see as fair and helpful; and ensuring that demands do not lead to burn out
(Macey and Schneider, 2008).
The influence managers have on their employees’ engagement is threefold:
(1) making employees feel that their work is meaningful, e.g. role assignments that are
important to the department for achieving its goals;
(2) reducing distractions of employees’ physical or emotional energy away from work,
e.g. providing accurate and timely information about organizational issues so
rumors do not preoccupy employees; and
(3) creating an environment that is psychologically safe, e.g. positive reinforcement
for trying something new even if it does not succeed.

Furthermore, our results fail to confirm the hypothesis according to which affective climate
would positively moderate the relationship between supervision function and organizational
commitment. This can be accounted for by the very nature of leadership implemented in the
company which revolves around the whole team alignment and mobilization around shared
objectives and aspirations rather than supervision. Alignment and inspiration are
particularly useful because they help establish solid work relationships between group
members, thus facilitating team work.
At the managerial level, by confirming the hypotheses quoted previously, we can bring
to light the fact that the major objective of distributed leadership is to encourage
interactions. It is adapted to create collective motivation and improve social climate and
work atmosphere. This type of leadership should be further supported by a dialogue
EBR between employees, enabling them to create an atmosphere of trust and common
representations, to hear differences, to valorize collaboration and build group identity. In
this regard, each member brings their share of expertise and responsibility to carry out
strategic objectives. The exercise of supervision and authority moves away from a coercive
vision toward a constructive and cooperative approach. In fact, the organization’s main
coordination mode will have to be founded on a horizontal and cross-sectional vision of the
organization, rather than on a vertical hierarchical control.
Eventually, this is about creating and developing collective trust so that all employees
are collectively involved at work. Today, integrating trust as parameter in management is
probably one of the key roles of tomorrow’s shared leadership.
Our results support the idea that the distributed leadership components are important
elements of organizational commitment. Indeed, management using support mechanisms
(survey feedback and coaching, for instance) creates a culture of engagement and self-
management. In a similar vein, team autonomy seems to be a crucial factor in determining
the effectiveness and appropriateness of distributed leadership in a team context. However,
we emphasize that distributed leadership involves dispersion and distribution of leadership
and responsibility throughout an organization and not only in a team context (Bolden, 2011;
Fitzsimons et al., 2011; Yukl, 2008).
Our results are embedded in the Tunisian cultural context which is itself ambivalent,
between two Western and Arab cultures, each with its own specificities. Studies also
highlight the Mediterranean and Western exposure of Tunisia and its impact on the
openness and adaptability of the country, by rejecting a unique Arab culture and by
identifying certain particularities of Tunisian culture (Lassoued, 2008; Smida and Latiri,
2004; Ben Rejeb et al., 2006; Dakhli, 2009; Soyah and Magroun, 2007; El Akremi et al., 2007;
Ouaness, 2011).
Despite the insights provided by the results of our study and despite its practical
implications, this research is not without limits. On a theoretical level, we cannot claim that
this study has provided exhaustive answers to the research question. It is therefore
desirable, in future research, to introduce other variables into the conceptual model such as
gender and seniority or job experience to better grasp and process the impact of distributed
leadership on organizational commitment.
Indeed, we note that some researchers have found that women are more committed
than men (Mathieu and Zajac, 1990; Reyes, 1992; Singh and Billingsley, 1998). Others
(Brunetti, 2001; Hulpia et al., 2009a) have revealed that people with more seniority or job
experience tend to be less committed to the organization, as compared to people with less
job experience. However, other researches have found a positive, albeit weak, relationship
between seniority or job experience and organizational commitment (Chan et al., 2008;
Mathieu and Zajac, 1990), whereas few others found no relationship at all (Dee et al.,
2006).
We suggest then to resume the same research conceptual model but by amending it with
the issues we have just raised.
On a methodological level, we also remain aware that our research does not ensure
external validity, despite the precautions we have taken both in terms of reliability and
internal validity (measurement scales, sample size). Indeed, the population and the sector
chosen raise the problem of the transferability (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) of results that might
be different in other contexts (sample in other sectors). The notion of context must be
conceived as dependent on the problem we are trying to solve, because it explains the goals
and objectives that social actors are trying to achieve (Boudon, 2013).
Note Leadership
1. The research of Hulpia et al. (2011) is an empirical analysis testing the relationship between and
distributed leadership and organizational commitment in the field of education, through the organizational
evaluation of the perception of 1,522 teachers working in 46 great secondary schools in Belgium.
These perceptions are relative to the different distributed leadership practices carried out by the commitment
leadership team. This team is constituted of a main leader, deputy leaders and leader teachers.
This exploration of perceptions allowed clear distributed leadership components to influence
organizational commitment.

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Appendix measures
Support (Psychometric qualities: a = 0.90)
(1 = never, 5 = always)
Premises a long-term vision
Debates company vision
Compliments employees
Helps employees
Explains his or her reason for criticism to employees
Is available after company to help employees when assistance is needed
Looks out for the personal welfare of employees
Encourages me to pursue my own goals for professional learning
Encourages me to try new practices consistent with my own interests
Provides organizational support for employees
Supervision (Psychometric qualities: a = 0.79)
(1 = never, 5 = always)
Evaluates the performance of the staff
Is involved in summative evaluation of employees
Is involved in formative evaluation of employees
Participative decision-making (Psychometric qualities: a = 0.81)
(1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree)
Leadership is delegated for activities critical for achieving company goals
Leadership is broadly distributed among the staff
We have an adequate involvement in decision-making
There is an effective committee structure for decision-making
Effective communication among staff is facilitated
There is an appropriate level of autonomy in decision-making
Cooperation within the leadership team (Psychometric qualities: a = 0.93)
(1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree)
There is a well-functioning leadership team in our company
The leadership team tries to act as well as possible
 The leadership team supports the goals we like to attain with our company Leadership
All members of the leadership team work in the same strain on the company’s core objectives and
In our company, the right man sits on the right place, taken the competencies into account organizational
Members of the management team divide their time properly commitment
Members of the leadership team have clear goals
Members of the leadership team know which tasks they have to perform
The leadership team is willing to execute a good idea
It is clear where members of the leadership team are authorized to
Organizational commitment (Psychometric qualities: a = 0.91)
(1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree)
My company inspires me to do the best I can
I’m proud to be a part of this company team
I really care about the fate of this company
I find that my values and the organization’s values are very similar
I regularly talk to friends about the company as a place
Where it is great to work
I’m really happy that I chose this company to work for
Trust (Psychometric qualities: a = 0.82)
(1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree)
I’m not sure I fully trust my employer
My employer is open and upfront with me
I believe my employer has high integrity
In general, I believe my employer’s motives and intentions
My employer is not always honest and truthful
I don’t think my employer treats me fairly
I can expect my employer to treat me in a consistent and predictable
Affective climate (Psychometric qualities: a = 0.78)
(1 = not at all, 5 = a great deal)
How much did you feel the group was accepted?
How much did you feel the group was sincere?
How much did you feel the group was supportive?
How much did you feel the group was warm?
How much did you feel the group was enthusiastic?

Corresponding author
Sinda Ben Sedrine can be contacted at: sinda.doghri@gmail.com

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