The global economy is becoming increasingly complex, and dynamic nowadays. Advanced information technology provides companies with a lot of help and benefit for business, while companies face challenges and competitions seriously more than before in the market. Thus, it is foreseen that effective leadership is a key for management and employees in today’s rapidly changing organizations to ensure companies’ competitive edge and continuous growth.
The purpose of this study is to explore how emotional leadership interacts with leader trust in promoting organizational commitment of companies, for further study of emotional operations which have attracted considerable attention in today’s world. This article reviewed major literatures, prior researches on the subjects of emotional leadership, leader trust and organization commitment in order to achieve the goal of the study, and proposed study hypotheses. Also positive research was performed to employees working in small and medium-sized companies, including ventures and social enterprises, and collected data from 496 employees of the companies. The researcher tested and analyzed the data statistically to verify the hypotheses.
The main findings of this study are the followings. First, it appeared that emotional leadership had a positive effect upon the employees’ trust in their leader. Especially, two component factors of leader’s self-awareness capability and relation-management capability were found to be significantly related to trust in leader, whereas the other component factors of leader’s self-management capability and social-awareness capability were not related to trust in leader. Second, the questions from trust in leader evaluated the outcome and relationship with affective commitment to organizations, where trust in leader was positively related to organizational commitment. Third, the
mediating effects of trust in leader was found between all component factors of emotional leadership and organizational commitment.
As a result of the study, the following implications were recognized. First, emotional leadership is still on progress to a systematic theory phase, and has rooms for further development of study. So, this study will contribute to theory and research on emotional leadership by attempting to advance the understanding of the role of emotional leadership. Second, It was found that the degree of organizational commitment appears high in case that the degree of employees’ trust in leader increases. Consistent with this perspective on the facilitative effect of trust in leader, positive work outcomes and organizational commitment will follow when employees trust their leaders. Third, trust in leader takes a mediating role between emotional leadership and organizational commitment, which means that a structural mechanism exists between the both.
In addition, there are some of practical implications from the study. It is not easy for small and medium-sized companies to seek talented employees and secure them in their organizations. Thus, it is important for leaders to promote trust in leader for employees to organizational commitment through emotional leadership. It is clear that high trust in leader leads employees focus on organizational commitment and induces beliefs with developing better communication and these results eventually will contribute companies to strengthen its competitiveness and to achieve its business target. Furthermore,
the emotional competency can be filled and improved by coaching and training programs related to emotional leadership. So, it is expected that experts in human resources can make a contribution in nurturing excellent leaders and employees with emotional competency through the programs.

Key words: emotional intelligence, emotional leadership, emotional competency, trust in leader, and organizational commitment.