Transactional Leadership

Figures 1 and 2 show the race and level of education of respondents who partook in this study. The race distribution of participants is 62.1 percent Black, 21.6 percent White, 7.3 percent Coloured and 9.1 percent Indian. This range is not remarkably different from the composition of the overall population at the top-management level in SOEs, which according to the Department of Labour (2020) is 60 percent Black, 22.8 percent White, 6.4 percent Coloured and 9.2 percent Indian, while the rest are foreign nationals. In essence, in the studied population, as well as in the SOEs generally, Black people predominate other racial groups.

Figure 1 Respondents racial distribution

Figure 2 indicates that 8.6 percent of the n=232 participants have a Grade 12 (National Senior) certificate, 19.4 percent have a diploma and 72 percent have a bachelor's degree. According to Statistics South Africa (2016), the number of persons who have attained a bachelor's degree across all ages in South Africa has increased. This progress is evident in the respondent population of this study because more than 70 percent of them hold a bachelor's degree. More instructively, 53 percent of all the respondents have a postgraduate qualification.

Figure 2 Respondents' level of education (n=232)

Bivariate analysis was used to test the possible existence of relationships between the facets of TLS and the three types of employee commitment. The results are presented in Table 2.

Table 2 Results of the tests of relationships between facets of the TLS and employee commitment types

In the context of South African SOEs, specifically within the studied population, results indicate that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between Black top-managers' use of the CR facet of the TLS and affective commitment (r = 0.34, p = 0.000); continuance commitment (r = 0.16, p = 0.018); and normative commitment (r = 0.35, p = 0.000). The null hypotheses of the study, H₁o H40 and H70, therefore, are not statistically supported. Interestingly, these results align with those of Alkahtani (2016) and Korir and Kipkebut (2016), who found a relationship between CR and all types of employee commitment.

As it relates to the MbE_A facet of the TLS, the study's results as shown in Table 2 revealed no statistically significant relationships between Black top-managers' use of MbE_A and affective commitment (r = -0.04, p = 0.504), continuance commitment (r = 0.10, p = 0.125), and normative commitment (r = 0.04, p = 0.530) in the studied population of employees in South African SOEs. The null hypotheses of the study, H20, H50 and H₅o, therefore, are statistically supported. This position is congruent with McLaggan et al.'s (2013) finding that there is no statistically significant association between MbE_A and all types of employee commitment. The result, however, contradicts Gardner's (2018) findings that a correlation exists between MbE_A and the affective, normative and continuous commitment of employees.

With respect to the MbE_P facet of the TLS of Black top-managers and its association with employee commitment, this study's results signal that a statistically significant negative relationship exists between MbE_P and affective commitment (r = -0.25, p = 0.000) as well as normative commitment (r = -0.19, p = 0.005). This result resonates with the findings of Al-Yami, et al. (2019) that a negative correlation exists between MbE_P and the affective and normative commitment of employees. As shown in Table 2, there is no statistically significant relationship between MbE_P and continuance commitment (r = -0.08, p = 0.202), which is consistent with the findings of earlier studies conducted by Lee (2005) and Delegach et al. (2017). Based on this study's results, the hypothesised relationships as expressed in H30 and H90 are not statistically supported, while the converse is the case for H₆0.