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Darwish A. Yousef: United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates
Introduction
Organizational commitment has received substantial attention in past research due to its significant impact on work attitudes such as job satisfaction, performance, absenteeism, and turnover intentions. Organizational commitment has been defined differently by different scholars depending on their backgrounds. However, Mowday et al.'s (1979) definition has been adopted in this study. This definition is widely used in the literature and it has been used before in third-world studies (e.g. Al-Meer, 1989). They define organizational commitment as the relative strength of the identification of the individual and his involvement with his particular organization. According to this definition, organizational commitment has three basic components: a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization's goals and values (identification); a willingness to exert a considerable effort on behalf of the organization (involvement); and a strong intent or desire to remain with the organization (loyalty). A sizable literature has looked into the relationships of organizational commitment with leadership behavior, on the one hand, and of organizational commitment with job satisfaction and performance, on the other, as well as of leadership behavior with job satisfaction and performance (e.g. Savery, 1994; Zeffane, 1994; Wilson, 1995; Liou, 1995; Wong et al., 1995; Brett etal., 1995; Kalleberg and Marsden, 1995; Fletcher and Williams, 1996; Benkhoff, 1997a). However, the moderating impacts of national culture (nationality) on such relationships, in addition to the mediating role of organizational commitment in the relationship of leadership behavior with job satisfaction and job performance; have received little attention in previous research despite the importance of this sort of research given that multiculturalism has become a dominant feature of the workforce in the UAE and in many other countries around the world. This type of research is also significant in understanding the mediating role organizational commitment plays in the relationships examined from both an academic and a practical standpoint as will be seen later. Additionally, some researchers have emphasized the need to study the relationships between organizational commitment and job satisfaction and performance taking into consideration variables such as leadership style, gender and work experience (Al-Meer, 1989). Inconsistent results are prevalent among many previous studies, thus making further investigation in this direction necessary. The main objective of this study is...