Enhancing Faculty Job Performance through Leadership Styles of Department Heads with a Mediating Role of Motivation

Abstract

One of the major factors that determine the job performance of faculty working in higher education institutions is the leadership style of the heads of departments, but the motivational processes involving the leadership styles of the department heads to the job performance of the teachers in the Pakistani universities are still not well examined. This paper examined how transformational leadership style, transactional leadership style, and laissez faire leadership style of head of the department affect job performance of teachers in the universities in Lahore district by using motivation as a mediating factor. This study was conducted following descriptive, quantitative, causal comparative design using a cross sectional survey of 200 university teachers (100 publics and 100 private), selected using multi stage sampling technique. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ; alpha = 0.86), Job Performance Scale (alpha = 0.89), and the Teachers Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Questionnaire (alpha = 0.88) were administered and used for data collection. Data analysis was done using one-way ANOVA and structural equation modeling (SEM). Research findings affirmed that transformational leadership has the greatest positive influence on faculty job performance over transactional and laissez faire style, which yielded significant findings. The SEM mediation analysis showed that motivation partly mediated the relationship between leadership style and job performance. Transformational leadership had a positive effect on motivation that had a strong correlation with job performance, and laissez faire leadership repressed motivation. Both null hypotheses were rejected. These results will have great implications on the leadership development programs of the heads of the departments in Pakistani universities.