Leaders’ Ethical Behaviour as Predictor of Affective Commitment to Squads among Cadets of Nigeria Police Academy
Group members’ Affective Commitment is needed for the necessary cohesion that is expected of any assembly or collection of people pursuing same goal. What leadership quality among others is required of a leader to enable followers’ passionate allegiance to the collective objectives? The aim of this study is to use leader’s ethical behaviours to forecast affective commitment to squad pursuit among Police cadets. Subordinate cadets were asked to rate the ethical leadership behaviours demonstrated by their cadet Leaders and also rate their own affective commitment to their squads (N = 252, X̅ Age = 22.70, Age range = 17 to 29 years, SD = 2.264, 75% males); employing a correlational design, subordinates’ affective commitment was then regressed on leaders’ ethical behaviours using a linear regression technique, after satisfying the statistical conditions for a same-level analysis. Subordinate Cadets’ rating of Ethical Leadership show a significant independent prediction of Subordinate Cadets’ Affective Commitment (β = .436, p = .000); and it is found to explain 21.6% of the variance in Affective commitment in the result from this study (R2 = .216, F (1,251) = 66.254, 95% CI [ .250, .409], p = .000). It is being submitted that ethical leadership behaviours facilitate affective commitment and could engender group unity and national development. To ensure group and social cohesion, affective commitment of group members must be present.