Influence of leadership styles on academician commitment to change: The impact of human resource practices and leader-member exchange
For many organisations, the key to their long-term future lies in their ability to adapt to change. Even so, many organisations face challenges when dealing with the change process. Institutions of higher education are not exempted from such challenges, and when undertaking change initiatives, th...
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Format: | Thesis |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2013
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Online Access: | http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/9208/9/Voon%2C%20Mung%20Ling.pdf |
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Summary: | For many organisations, the key to their long-term future lies in their ability to adapt to
change. Even so, many organisations face challenges when dealing with the change process.
Institutions of higher education are not exempted from such challenges, and when undertaking
change initiatives, their success heavily relies on academician capability and commitment-tochange.
Despite the importance of successful change initiatives, few studies have examined
the linkages between leadership style, commitment-to-change and other contributing factors
in the education sector. Therefore, this study specifically addresses these issues by examining
the relationship between leadership style and academicians’ commitment-to-change, with the
quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) as a moderator, and human resource (HR)
practices as a mediator.
Data has been collected from sampled academic staff working in 20 Malaysian public
universities, using the non-probability purposive sampling technique. From 2000 distributed
sets of questionnaires, 470 were returned and useable, resulting in a 24.15 percent response
rate. The analysis of this data applied hierarchical multiple regression testing to examine the
effects of the moderator and mediator towards the relationship between leadership styles and
commitment-to-change. The study findings show transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles
were positively related to commitment-to-change. LMX moderates the relationship between
transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles, and commitment-to-change; however,
LMX has no moderating effect on the relationship between transactional leadership and
v
commitment-to-change. Mediation effects were observed with the HR practices dimensions of
teamwork and development, and management transparency, on transformational and
transactional leadership styles, and academician commitment-to-change. Laissez-faire
leadership style and commitment-to-change though, did not exhibit any mediating effect from
HR practices. Based on these findings, the study concludes that leadership style, particularly
transformational leadership, is an important construct that influences the commitment-tochange
of academicians.
Overall, the results of this study increase our understanding of the effect of leadership styles
on commitment-to-change, as well as the role of LMX and HR practices as moderator and
mediator, respectively. Furthermore, the study identifies new leadership and commitment-tochange
dimensions, which are unique to the Malaysian context. In addition, this study also
provides a significant contribution to university policy makers who are now able to design
more effective HR policies and practices, specifically related to teamwork and development,
and management transparency, that support higher levels of commitment-to-change. The
study further informs university leaders, the head of school, or dean of faculty, that
establishing strong, authentic relationships with their subordinates will generate higher levels
of academician commitment-to-change. |
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