How is responsible leadership related to the three-component model of organisational commitment? Amlan Haque School of Business and Law, CQUniversity, Sydney Campus, Sydney, Australia Mario Fernando School of Management, Operations and Marketing, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia, and Peter Caputi Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia Abstract Purpose – The increasing number of corporate scandals and averseness to employee commitment have brought the concept of responsible leadership (RL) to the forefront of organisational studies. Many studies have found that leadership practice is an antecedent of employees’ organisational commitment. However, little attention has been devoted to exploring the newly evolved RL for its impact on employee commitment. This study examines the influence of RL on the three-component model of organisational commitment. Design/methodology/approach – Applying the Social Identity Theory of Leadership (SITL), this study investigates the relationships between RL and the three-component model of organisational commitment. In particular, this study is framed to apply RL as a value-based leadership approach to examine its relationship on employees’ three types of organisational commitment such as affective, continuance and normative commitment. A web-based self-administered survey was applied to collect data targeting a sample of 200 full- time Australian employees. Findings – The study results show that RL significantly effects all three components of organisational commitment. Both affective and normative commitments were significantly associated by RL compared to employees’ continuance commitment. Originality/value – The paper extends the knowledge regarding newly evolved concept of RL which explains the significance of employee commitment and, further it provides empirical evidence from the perspective of SITL. The main contribution in this paper comes from new knowledge about the associations among RL and the three-component model of organisational commitment. Keywords Responsible leadership, Social identity theory of leadership, Three-component model of organisational commitment, Structural equation modeling, Australia Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction The demand for managerial responsibility and increasing business scandals has prompted scholars to pay increasing attention to employee’s organisational commitment in business studies (Haque et al., 2019; Karia and Abu, 2019). Many researchers have attempted to provide insights into the reasons why employees show more commitment to their organisations and identified some critical antecedents at the individual (e.g. turnover intentions; Haque et al., 2019) and interpersonal (e.g. transformational leadership; Ribeiro et al., 2018) levels, thereby enriching our understanding of the formation mechanisms of organisational commitment. However, more work should be aimed at exploring the newly evolved concept of responsible leadership (RL) for its impact on employee commitment. Because of its potential trade-offs between achieving profit maximisation and balancing both organisational and societal responsibilities, leading responsibly involves significant challenges (Ropo and Sauer, 2008; Responsible leadership and three components The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1741-0401.htm Received 26 October 2019 Revised 3 April 2020 Accepted 17 May 2020 International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management © Emerald Publishing Limited 1741-0401 DOI 10.1108/IJPPM-10-2019-0486