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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between headteachers and teachers and its effects on the role of trust in Malaysian high-performing schools through the dyadic relationship theoretical approach.

Using a survey questionnaire, a total of 199 teachers from five high-performing schools were selected as respondents for data collection. Before proceeding with inferential statistical analysis, teachers were separated into the “in-group” and “out-group”.

The findings revealed that the teachers from both the groups perceived that their facets of trust are strongly associated with the type of relationship they have with their school leaders. The results also demonstrate that the quality of dyadic relationships between headteachers and teachers moderately influences teachers’ trust.

The findings suggest that the headteachers should always build good relationships with the teachers to gain teachers’ trust for sustaining school effectiveness. The findings encourage the Ministry of Education, particularly the Teacher Recruitment Division, to require all teachers and headteachers to deepen their knowledge on leader-member exchange (LMX) role-development processes.

The results are of great importance since limited empirical studies have examined LMX role-development processes with reference to teachers and headteachers in the context of Malaysian higher performing schools.

This study aims to investigate whether organisational climate (OC) predicts academic staff performance at Malaysian higher education institutions (HEIs). The study equally aims at validating the psychometric properties of OC and workforce performance (WFP) constructs.

Survey questionnaires were administered to 800 academic staff of eight selected HEIs. Principal component analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, full-fledged structural equation modelling and multiple regression analysis were performed to explore the underlying factors and test the factorial validity of the constructs.

The analysis yielded a five-factor index for the OC construct, whereas the WFP construct comprised two factors. The findings reveal a strong predictive causal effect between OC and WFP. These results suggest that establishing a positive OC enhances academic staff performance. Furthermore, the hypothesised model adds new knowledge to the literature of OC, from the Malaysian context, which could be used to predict WFP at the tertiary level.

The study concludes by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of the findings for HEIs.

This paper makes a significant contribution to the understanding of how OC could be used as an effective instrument in improving academic staff performance in the context of Malaysian HEIs.