The Influence of Shared Leadership towards Organizational Commitment in a Public Organization of United Arab Emirates

The existence of many leadership styles implies a lack of consensus on the best way to guide organizations in their pursuit for progress. Equally, the interplay between leadership style and outcomes such as organizational commitment remains unclear. This study investigated the influence of shared leadership on organizational commitment within the public sector in UAE context. The research aims to explicate the influence of shared leadership on organizational commitment in one of the public organizations in UAE. The study employed a quantitative research approach - a survey method using questionnaires to collect data. Data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The descriptive approach relied on the mean, standard deviation while inferential method was deployed using regression analyses. The study found that shared leadership is practiced in the public sector entity in UAE, given the average mean values of 4.1 and standard deviation of 0.92. The R value between shared leadership and organizational commitment is 0.48 thus indicating a moderate relationship between shared leadership and organizational commitment in public sector entity in UAE. The study has both practical and theoretical implications. Given the possibility of the influence of shared leadership being indirect, the study implication is that future researcher should investigate the presence and role of intervening variables. Practically, leaders within the UAE context would benefit from employing shared leadership as best practice more extensively to improve organizational commitment.


Introduction
The ever-changing world justifies the adoption of new approaches to the running of organizations, since the influence of shared leadership on organizational commitment and team performance is widely researched however it lacks latest studies on its influence specifically in the UAE region. Despite common belief, there is little evidence to support the idea that shared leadership produces favorable results. Furthermore, few, if any, research have been undertaken in the UAE area to confirm the leadership-organizational commitment relationship. According to Goldsmith (2010), there is an increasing need for dynamic flexibility alongside a broadened knowledge expertise and base to steer organizations through vulgarities that characterize the operational environment. Based on the observation of Bolden (2011), shared leadership relies on the combination of leading abilities and is among the most appropriate tools for solving the challenging needs within organizations. In his review of the concept, Goldsmith (2010) defined shared leadership as a style that involved maximizing all human resources in an entity through the empowerment of individuals by giving them a chance to assume leadership positions in areas in which they have expertise. Nowadays, the complexity in organizational environments continues to increase demands on leadership so that, in many cases, the responsibility could be overwhelming for one individual.
Like in the case of shared leadership, organizational commitment has been subjected to scholarly investigations while at the same time being an interesting issue within business environments. According to Zaraket (2018), workers have become a significant endowment within the organizational context. With the increasing levels of volatility and dynamism in the environment, employees have become unique resources for their organizations. According to Bergman et al. (2012), organizations fall into social systems, collective interest groups, and recruiters of employees. Against this backdrop, ensuring a committed workforce is a primary concern that entities need to address. Thus, studying organizational commitment is essential in highlighting the current state of organizations and the need for re-orienting human resources usage.
The executive's principal objective at Public Transportation Organization in UAE is to manage a future system that provides access to safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable modes of transportation and improves road safety. With a focus on the requirements of patients, women, children, persons with disabilities, and the elderly, these enhancements are implemented in consideration of the growing population.
Transformational leadership is in great demand at the Public Transportation Organization in UAE, given the necessity for cooperation resulting from several permanent and joint committees and teams charged with substantial responsibilities. One must manage a dynamic work environment influenced by external economic, social, and cultural forces. Such a dynamic organizational environment necessitates transformative entity with a significant social influence. This study examines the effects transformational leadership has on the present complicated leadership and management styles and the influence it has on organizational commitment at the public organization level.

Theoretical Perspectives of Shared Leadership Influence on Organizational Commitment
The literature on shared leadership is extensive. Shared leadership is perceived as like distributed leadership despite the need for more consensus on the concept. The leadership concept is applied across public and private organizations. Although the leadership model applies to both middle and upper levels of management, the leading style looks more relevant in the former category. It was also established that shared leadership is increasingly applied within the school environment, although the school physical setting needs to be more supportive of the style. However, the finding that many organizations are becoming flatter and refuse the hierarchical structure points to a significant shift in school organizational structure. The implication is that adopting the style is bound to expand with time. Another critical establishment based on past research is that shared leadership is generally associated with positive organizational outcomes such as organizational commitment and effectiveness.
The above section covers shared leadership leading to significant highlights. For instance, it emerges that shared leadership is advantageous to the propagation of ownership, although it is faulted for opening the window for contests among leaders and follower(s). The theory has undergone various stages of development, and its current state reflects changes in leadership theory in general. Although leadership is difficult to define, the paper holds that shared leadership manifests through the division of duties, team building, and assigning roles.
Based on existing research, the popular perspective is that shared leadership relates to organizational aspects such as organizational commitment. To understand the link with other theories, shared leadership is essential in elucidating various aspects of organizational performance. Thus, the theory has been tested across many organizational contexts.

Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment is a variable that often attracts the attention of scholars and organizational stakeholders' attention. According to Anderson (2015), organizational commitment measures the degree to which an employee is dedicated to the organization's cause. Consequently, talk about commitment must involve the extent to which a party is willing to contribute towards attaining specific goals. In her research Anderson (2015) indicated that the level, as well as the type of commitment, was influential to workers' intentions to stay or continue working at an organization. Consequently, the above author investigated how various types of One leader Many leaders

Shared leadership norms A Trust
Adaptability commitment influenced workers. From the literature review, Anderson (2015) established that organizational commitment was a key driver of several office-related behaviors and organizational citizenship, among others. Owing to the idea that commitment affects the performance of an organization and, to a large extent, their decision to stay or to leave, many organizations pay attention to the issue.
Like shared leadership, organizational commitment has often attracted the attention of both the academic and business communities. Given the highly dynamic nature of the environment, employees have become organizations' unique resources. Consequently, human resources should be considered a significant endowment in the labor market (Zaraket, 2018). According to Zaraket (2018), theorists and practitioners infer that organizations are structured based on three paradigms: organizations as social systems, organizations as avenues for meeting common interests, and organizations as endeavors to recruit and maintain good employees. On this basis, the overriding idea is that the success of an organization lies in attracting and retaining skillful laborers that are self-driven and committed to their cause. Given the role of leadership in organizations, leaders have to lead organizations in a manner that facilitates the emergence of a committed workforce.
In theory, higher levels of organizational commitment are desirable because they can benefit their entities. Such gains include reduced turnover, improved performance, reduced absenteeism, and higher organizational efficacy. Despite enough research studies, a few have attempted to link shared leadership and organizational commitment. According to Zaraket (2018), the prosperity of an organization depends on its ability to attract and retain a talented workforce. To achieve this objective, organizations have realized the need to implement measures, for example, adopting shared leadership to attract talented and skillful employees.
Furthermore, according to Zaraket (2018), theorists assert that commitment differs from general attitude or motivation. In particular, commitment is crucial in directing individuals to act in a given manner; in the eyes of neutral observers, it could sometimes contradict their interests. For instance, part-time workers may expend more effort even though they do not have job security.

Methodology
This chapter summarizes the research procedures that formed the basis for the rest of the study. The study was conducted using quantitative methods, and the researcher planned to employ a survey format. The plan was to employ a cross-sectional strategy, collecting data at a fixed point to gather information for the study. The sampling methods used include the purposive and stratified random sampling techniques. Purposive sampling was used in selecting the organization, while stratified random sampling applied to selecting individuals from various organizational departments.
The study relies on questionnaires as appropriate tools for data collection. The researcher plans to send the survey link through email to ease data collection. The effort is made to test reliability and validity by statistical measures such as Cronbach's alpha. The questionnaire instrument is taken from the existing scales on the three variables under investigation. The first scale measures shared leadership, while the second measures organizational commitment. The shared leadership scale is based on the work of Conger and Pearce (2003), while the organizational commitment scale is drawn from the research by (Allen and Meyer, 1990).
The collected data will be processed using the Stata statistical software. The application will aid in data cleaning as well as statistical analysis. The software plays a vital role in identifying any missing values and outliers. Upon completing the cleaning exercise, the data analysis is tailored toward addressing the research hypotheses. Despite the prominence of inferential statistics in the current study, descriptive data was also to be presented to highlight the variables investigated. The chapter also discusses statistical applications such as regression and hypothesis testing based on their relevance to the research. In practice, regression analysis is crucial in the establishment of cause-effect relationships. Thus, the idea is to use the method to explore the possible effect of shared leadership on organizational commitment. Concerning hypotheses testing, the goal was to give credence to research findings.

Research Questions Research question: What is the Influence of Shared Leadership on Organizational Commitment in an organization
Research Hypothesis One (HO1): shared leadership has no significant influence towards organizational commitment in an organization  According to table 2., the R² score is 0.597, indicating that 59.7% of the variation in the organizational commitment is explained by shared leadership. ANOVA results in table 3. show the p-value (0.000), which is smaller than the alpha-suggested value (0.01). The findings support the position that the model is significant since the F value is 243.751. The implication is that leadership holds a significant effect on organizational commitment. The other regression results demonstrate that transactional leadership significantly influences organizational commitment at a 0.01 level of significance (β =-0.352, p<0.01). On the other hand, the results indicate that directive leadership significantly influences organizational commitment at the 0.01 level of significance (β=-0.390, p<0.01). Additionally, the results indicate that the empowerment of Individuals significantly influences organizational commitment at the 0.01 level of significance (β =-0.345, p<0.01).

Figures and Tables
The results indicate further that the empowerment team significantly influences organizational commitment at a 0.01 level of significance (β =-0.282, p<0.01). Regarding aversive leadership, the variable significantly influences organizational commitment at the 0.01 level of significance (β =-0.223, p<0.01). Overall, the results indicate that all shared leadership elements significantly influence organizational commitment. Therefore, the study finds evidence against the hypothesis that shared leadership has no significant hypothesis toward organizational commitment.

Discussion and Conclusion
Shared leadership and organizational commitment are critical components in present-day organizations. This prompted the present study to investigate the link between the three concepts. The current research sought to explicate shared leadership's role in organizational commitment within the public organization context. In the course of the study, it emerged that despite the shared leadership topic attracting considerable interest from the scholarship community, much remained to discover, especially regarding the UAE environment. In an attempt to investigate the topic, the research held the same as the one by Chiung-Hui (2016), who noted that both empirical and theoretical literature relating to the consequences and antecedents of shared leadership was relatively scarce.
The study finds that shared leadership influences the variable of organizational commitment significantly. In other words, the leadership variable explains a part of the variation in organizational commitment. With the results showing significant influence, the study findings do not support the proposition that shared leadership does not have a significant influence on organizational commitment. The current study's findings align with the Markovits et al (2013) research. The finding is critical to the rejection of the hypothesis that no significant relationship exists between team performance and organizational commitment, therefor, the study finds evidence against the hypothesis that there is no significant influence of shared leadership towards organizational commitment.
The present research relies on one organization as the source of information. Despite being a valuable case for the study's objective, its representativeness in capturing the general characteristics of companies in the UAE remains debatable. Nonetheless, the research offers adequate data to extrapolate the interplay between the variables under investigation. To mitigate such drawbacks, researchers should consider enlisting data from more public organizations in the future. Including more than one company would facilitate comparative analysis, thus allowing for a more informed position on the topic.
While addressing the research questions, the study employs a quantitative approach prone to some limitations. In practice, quantitative data is preferred because figures help portray an issue under investigation. Nonetheless, numerals or numerical data do not provide in-depth details about an issue. The import of this is that in instances where in-depth data is being sought, the methodology might offer little help. Nonetheless, it is possible to address the challenge using inferences.
Using a rating-scale type of data raises concerns regarding the weights that respondents give. For instance, it remains to be seen whether the distance between strongly agree and agree is equivalent to the distance between strongly disagree and disagree. Besides, a scale has limited choices, so a respondent has to pick an option from the list. In instances where respondents have different views, they must align them with the choices presented. Nonetheless, the scales employed for the current study have been validated through past studies. Thus, they provide reliable tools for measuring the variables under investigation.
The research was grounded on five hypotheses. The hypothesis focused on the relationship between shared leadership, organizational commitment, and team performance. Taken collectively, the findings conclude that affective and continuance commitment have a positive relationship with team performance. Statistically, changes in organizational commitment explain variance in team performance. Hence, the findings negate the hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between organizational commitment and team performance.
Based on the SPSS regression output, shared leadership explains between 20% and 25% of the variation in team performance. The results show that shared leadership significantly influences the performance of teams, an aspect confirmed by the asterisk on the regression coefficients. Hence, the findings contradict the hypothesis that shared leadership has no significant influence on team performance.

Contribution of The Study
The research contributes to shared leadership, organizational commitment literature. Although shared leadership significantly affects team performance, its impact on organizational commitment is less. Similarly, the association between organizational commitment and team performance could be more robust. For the leadership style to have more effect, it is recommended to implore workers to participate more in the organizational activities that align with the suggestion by (Briner and Rousseau, 2011). Ensuring an enhanced understanding of organizational goals and reconciling them with those of employees would prove critical.
In conclusion, the research has established that within the public organization context, shared leadership is practiced. In addition, employees show a high level of organizational commitment, while teams demonstrate a high level of performance.
The evidence adduced in the research leads to the rejection of all hypotheses. Briefly, the study rejects that there is no significant relationship between shared leadership and organizational commitment; there is no significant relationship between shared leadership and team performance, there is no significant relationship between organizational commitment and team performance, there is no significant influence of shared leadership towards organizational commitment, and there is no significant influence of shared leadership towards team performance.
Moreover, the research has also discovered that a strong positive relationship exists between shared leadership and organizational commitment. Similarly, there is evidence of a relationship between shared leadership and team performance. Organizational commitment and team performance also have a relationship. Concerning the influence of shared leadership on organizational commitment, the study concludes that shared leadership influences organizational commitment positively. Similarly, the research notes that leadership style has a positive influence on team performance. In summary, the study establishes a high presence of shared leadership, team performance and organizational commitment in the government entity in public sector.

Recommendations
Further study is required to reproduce the results in a larger and more diverse group. Conducting research on bigger populations would also allow for an examination of the results' applicability across UAE's various nationalities, age, and ethnic groupings. The results could be enriched by linking entities on local level as well as federal level, working in various segments of government public sector. Future research should include employee's perception of shared leadership involved in multiple executive committees. Future studies could focus on public sector on a wider scope, examine the interaction between shared leadership and environmental elements within organizations. Another research could be conducted from bottom to top and asses the employee view and perspective upwards to shared leadership behavior. This could help in have a 360 degrees angle on the topic. This could gauge the impact of the change management that might happen in an organization in the future, pin pointing at the exact element that might affect the behavior and environment in public sector.
The current study drew its data from one public organization based in the UAE. Being a government institution, its general approach to operations might differ from those conducting activities in the private sector. Consequently, in the future, research might consider exploring the issue by drawing a larger sample that includes companies from the private sector. In particular, there is a need to dedicate additional research to analyzing mitigating factors regarding shared leadership and organizational commitment to organization type. Moreover, the research also recommends the extension of the study to investigate the connection between shared leadership and workers' affective commitment across various types of private enterprises. Similarly, conducting a study involving data from another jurisdiction or country would aid in conducting a comparative analysis of the topic.