Leadership Styles in Higher Educational Institutions in India – “A Need for Paradigm Shift!”

Abstract

The progress of a nation is quite closely linked with the quality of education it offers its citizens. The onus of nurturing future leaders, the students, lies significantly with higher educational institutions (HEIs) and the academic staff associated with such institutions. Therefore, HEIs need so that these engaged employees may go on to look beyond regular extrinsic motivators to ensure employee engagement to mentor students effectively. In this study, we attempted to investigate the influence of an important predictor of employee engagement, leadership, specifically servant leadership style mediated through job satisfaction. A structured questionnaire was administered to the academic staff of the top 25 universities in India. The data collected and the proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. The results confirmed that job satisfaction mediates the relationship between servant leadership and work engagement. The study offers insights into the importance of servant leadership to foster employee engagement and thereby institutional effectiveness in the educational sector.

Citation

Sharma, V., Poulose, J. and Maheshkar, C. (2022), "Leadership Styles in Higher Educational Institutions in India – “A Need for Paradigm Shift!”", Sengupta, E. and Blessinger, P. (Ed.) Role of Leaders in Managing Higher Education (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 48), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 59-81. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120220000048005