Mediating Role of Organisational Commitment in the Relationship between Leadership Styles and Employee Performance in Southwest Nigerian Universities

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between transformational and transactional leadership and performance in selected universities in the Southwest of Nigeria, with an emphasis on organizational commitment as a mediator. This study was prompted by the quest to ascertain the role of leadership behaviors on academic staff performance in institutions of higher learning. The quantitative research design was adopted, and 4 universities were purposively selected. The universities were selected as a sample of the few universities in Southwest Nigeria that were listed on a global university ranking website. Data were collected from 376 academic staff members across several faculties in the four selected universities. The universities were chosen because they have consistently been ranked among the few universities in South-West Nigeria that feature in recognized global university rankings.. The data analysis method adopted was Path Analysis Structural Equation Modelling (PA-SEM), where the direct and indirect effects were both investigated. Results show that Transformational leadership has a direct, strong, and significant effect on employee performance (β = 0.3874, p = 0.000), while transactional leadership has a direct, weak but significant effect on performance (β = 0.2098, p = 0.001). Organizational commitment has a significant positive effect on employee performance (β = 0.2353, p < 0.001). Organisational commitment was also found to significantly mediate between both transformational (indirect effect β = 0.311147, t = 5.72, p = 0.000) and transactional leadership (indirect effect β = 0.2012783, t = 3.93, p = 0.000) on employee performance. It can be concluded that organisational commitment is a crucial mediating factor between leadership styles and employee performance in the university setting. Hence, administrators should strive to employ more of transformational leadership styles and improve the organisational commitment of academic staff members.