LEADING WITH DEMOCRACY: UNPACKING THE PATHWAYS FROM DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP TO ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP THROUGH ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT

Abstract

The current research examined the connection between democratic leadership and the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Pakistan and organizational commitment was put forward as the mediator. Despite the fact that most studies on leadership in the education sector have focused mainly on transformational and transactional paradigm, little empirical analysis has been given to the democratic leadership as a participative form of governance. Considering the mounting level of performance expectations and the bureaucracy of governance that Pakistani universities face, demystifying the way participative leadership leads to discretionary faculty action is of theoretical and practical importance. The study had a quantitative design which used cross sectional survey studies design. The academic personnel of both public and private HEIs in Pakistan were used as the sources of information. Democratic leadership, organizational commitment and OCB were measured using established measurement scales. The structural equation modeling (SEM) was adopted to analyze the measurement model and test the hypothesized structural relationships, including mediation effects. The methodological rigor and strong validity of the findings were assessed by reliability, convergent axiom, discriminant axiom and bootstrapped indirect effects. Results indicated that OCB had a positive relationship with democratic leadership in faculty members. In addition, democratic leadership showed positive relation with organization commitment which in turn significantly forecasted OCB. The mediation analysis reflected that the organizational commitment partly mediated the relation between democratic leadership and OCB, which implies that participatory leadership positively influences discretionary behaviors directly and indirectly through the enhancement of psychological attachment to the institution. The findings are of great benefits to university administrators and policy makers. Academic leadership can strengthen the commitment of the faculty and voluntary participation of the faculty by promoting shared decision-making practices, faculty voice, and transparent administrative governance. As a result, the democratic leadership practices could serve as a strategic tool to enhance institutional effectiveness, cooperation and sustainable performance in higher education institutions. Participative governance competencies should thus be integrated into leadership development programs in the universities to produce committed and citizenship-oriented academic communities. The research can contribute to the literature on leadership and organizational behavior in three major ways. To begin with, it contributes to the development of the knowledge about democratic leadership as a specific and contextually-focused style in higher education.  Second, it determines organizational commitment as a central mediating variable between participative leadership and discretionary faculty behavior. Third, it has enhanced research on global leadership as it is an empirical study of the higher education sector in Pakistan, where the context is underrepresented by other studies in the field of organizations.