The impact of leadership styles on the engagement of cadres, lecturers and staff at public universities - Evidence from Vietnam

Abstract

Many studies have shown that job performance and leadership are important in our society. In addition, to improve the quality of work or to improve the work efficiency is still a lot of challenges for each leader. In Vietnam, there are few specific studies on the impact of leadership styles on employee engagement such as: transformational leadership styles, business leadership styles and leadership styles. In the field of higher education, the fewer studies on these issues. A study is conducted to test the impact of leadership styles on the engagement of cadres, lecturers and staff at public universities in Vietnam. Using adjustment techniques, inspecting the scales and theoretical models representing the relationship among the influential factors. The research is based on a sample of 309 cadres, lecturers and staff currently working in universities in Vietnam and used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to test the relationships among the variables. The study results show that the scales of the variables: transformational leadership, transactional leadership, laissez faire leadership, job satisfaction and organizational engagement attain the validity and reliability in the research. The study results also show transformational leadership, transactional leadership and laissez faire leadership are directly and indirectly affected by job satisfaction and organizational commitment.