While this study is to draw from the autocratic and transformational leadership styles to advance further understanding on the underlying mechanisms that enable leaders to behave in an autocratic or transformational manner; and to affect employee motivation, their behaviour and consequently, their organisational oriented ventures. The paper intends to establish the role of leadership style in motivating the teaching staff to be committed to their work. From these 13 high schools, 184 teaching staff were selected to participate. It should be noted that these 'high schools were not performing above the provincial benchmark. In order to obtain a holistic view of the overall leadership style present in the school system, a Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) was used. The researchers administered the questionnaires with the assistance of schools' administrative clerks and the completed questionnaires were collected by the research support group. Data were analysed by descriptive statistics, such as percentages, frequency and the Cronbach-alpha coefficient to test among other things, the reliability of describing the impact and the leadership style in these schools. The study reveals that there strong relationship between transformational leadership behaviours and commitment (affective commitment; continuance commitment; and normative commitment). The findings further highlighted the relationship trust, inspiring a shared vision, encouraging creativity and emphasising development as positive aspect that motivate staff. While it can be argued that transformational leadership cannot raise job satisfaction, however the commitment of teachers to their job can raise job satisfaction and ultimately improve the school's academic performance.

The shortage of academic staff and the failure of universities to retain quality academic staff continue to be crucial to the changing prospects and potentials of knowledge formation and learning. This paper intends to examine factors that influence the poor retention rate of academic staff at selected universities in South Africa. The survey involved 80 academic staff lecturing at the selected institutions. The sample was chosen in such a way that more than 35 percent of the selected academic staff have worked at higher education institutions for more than 10 years. Prior to conducting the study, a provisional literature review was performed on recent research regarding reasons for academic staff quitting the profession or changing universities. The study attracted responses from 80 academic staff and the survey discovers job satisfaction as the main factor keeping academic staff in their profession. However, job satisfaction was also linked with career growth and academic development. The study could not rule out the probabilities of working conditions as a factor influencing retention. While these intrinsic factors play an important role, there were also extrinsic factors, as construed from the findings. Respondents considered an academic profession to be a meager paying job, with little opportunity for growth. However, it can be argued that salary is a concern, even though academic staff considers that the academic profession has a superior reputation in society. Nonetheless, many academics believe that the profession has a heavy workload, making it difficult to meet promotion requirements and poor mentoring and capacity development, which would benefit from academic support, unambiguous promotion guidelines and clear, homogenous salary packages.

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