Leadership skill, leadership style and job commitment among academic staff of Nigerian universities: the moderating effects of employee's attitude and work environment

Abstract

Abstract:The study aims to determine the moderating effects of employee's attitude and work environment on the relationship between leadership skill and leadership style, and employee's job commitment among academic staff of Nigerian universities. The results of this study would enable the Nigerian government to develop strategies to help lecturers develop more interest in research. The study employs cross-sectional survey design, with simple random sampling, to collect data from 340 academic staff of three universities in the northern, eastern and western regions of Nigeria. Descriptive statistics and Partial Least Square (Smart PLS) were used to analyse data. The results indicate that transformational leadership style is positively related to employee's job commitment and that attitude moderates between transactional leadership style and employee's job commitment. The study suggests that appropriate leadership (from heads of departments) and adequate funding (from government) could engender more research commitments among scholars at Nigerian universities.

Leadership styles, organisational rewards and employees’ commitment in academic libraries

“…This means that heads of libraries and subordinate staff are not usually on the same page when it comes to the types of leadership style used. A study by Ekpe et al (2017) found that library leaders in Nigeria were more transformational than transactional in their leadership approach. Akidi and Chukwueke (2020) explored the leadership styles of university librarians and employees’ productivity in university libraries in Imo State, Nigeria, and found that the university librarians adopted autocratic, democratic and transformational leadership styles with a focus on transformational and democratic leadership styles.…”

“…Some researchers have investigated the relationship between leadership styles and employee commitment (Arumuru, 2019; Dikko et al, 2017; Ekpe et al, 2017), and between organisational rewards and employee commitment (Aiyebelehin et al, 2020; Azeez et al, 2016) among staff at Nigerian universities. Most of the earlier studies on employee commitment merely scratch the surface from the viewpoint of the generality of the employees (Adetayo et al, 2023; Nwokocha and Iheriohanma, 2015; Uwandu, 2020).…”