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The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the relation between police transformational leadership and organizational commitment is mediated by organizational culture. Drawing on the competing values framework (Quinn, 1988), four types of cultural orientations (group, developmental, hierarchical, and rational) are analyzed.

In total, 358 South Korean police officers are surveyed. Using competing values as multiple mediators, a parallel four mediator model is estimated. Bias-corrected bootstrapping methods are employed to consider the small sample size, as well as the possible non-normal distribution of specific indirect effects.

The linkage between transformational leadership and commitment appears to be fully mediated by group culture. Interestingly, multiple individual officer characteristics, duty type, and departmental size do not impact respective constructs overall.

The use of cross-sectional data hinders causal ordering among constructs included.

Given the full mediation relationships among the three constructs, it is advisable to develop more nuanced leadership training programs optimized for fostering “considerate and supportive leaders” who have been known to impact group culture.

Including two understudied police organizational correlates (i.e. transformational leadership and organizational culture), this study accounts for the mediating role of organizational culture in the transformational leadership-commitment link with multiple variables frequently used in previous research being controlled.