ANALYSING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP, TALENT MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION HEALTH AS PREDICTORS OF UNIVERSITY TRANSFORMATION

Abstract

Research objective: The objective of the study was to examine the relationship between sustainable leadership, talent management and organizational health as predictors of university transformation. This study went further to establish the mediation effect of organizational health as a mediating factor between the exogenous variables (sustainable leadership and talent management) and endog-enous variable (university transformation). Research technique and methodology: The study used a cross sectional survey design and the sample of respondents (N=820) was randomly chosen from six universities in which the central region of Uganda. The sample was deemed convenient for this study since the method used for data analysis was structural equation modelling that normally requires a big number of sample popula-tion. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to analyze each of the individual constructs used to attain reasonable parameters estimates. The fully fledged structural equation modelling (SEM) was used in the study to analyze the hypothesized structural model and its casual relation-ships plus the mediation effect between the constructs. Main findings: The findings of the study showed that there is positive relationship between sustain-able leadership, talent management and organizational health. However, the relationship between sustainable leadership and university transformation, talent management and university transforma-tion were negatively related. 33 Practical implications: It was recommended to educational practitioners, lecturers and policy mak-ers to use this model to harness university transformation. For researchers, it could be used to do fur-ther examination of university transformation on other universities both locally and internationally. 1. Introduction For the last many years universities are going through tremendous changes that have not only changed their education status but have moved them from the traditional known university management to modern management systems that require commodification of knowledge, internationalization, customer care and virtualization (Halász, 2007). Moreover the four (Cs) have also brought another equation that university management and leadership must think more about and forge the best ways through which these institutions must survive and thrive in the era of competition, rising costs, the changing of university customs and characteristics, and the turbulent crises (Bunoti, 2011; Mpaata, 2010; Saymeh, 2014). The forces of change mentioned above, require universities to adopt and integrate new trends of management style to facilitate sustainable leadership, human resource development and enabling working environment for both employees and customer satisfaction and attract them towards achievement of organizational goals and objectives (Bora, 2014). Furthermore, for universities to achieve transformation, Skordoulis, (2010) states that management should focus on people work management, train special people in steering management issues, streamline communication structure and have governance challenges addressed to ensure that ethics and vision are protected to enable achievement of institutional remodeling in its market strategy. Moreover, Awbrey, (2005) states that changing the management and education system of the universities is not something easy due to both diverse and inexperienced human resources without skills of coping up with proper models that universities must opt for and survive in the changing knowledge market. It is therefore from this background that the current study is designed to examine the factors that predict university transformation.