Predicting academics’ job satisfaction from their perceived leadership styles: Evidence from Tanzania

Abstract

Over the last several decades, the attention of scholars in the field of leadership in higher education (HE) has been rapidly growing. A corpus of literature on leadership research has established how leadership styles affect institutional performance, organizational commitment, culture, employees’ motivation, effectiveness, retention, and job satisfaction. Although a considerable amount of research on how leadership is related to employees’ job satisfaction across literature exists, however, little research has studied the influence of academics’ perceived leadership styles on their job satisfaction in African countries and particularly in Tanzania. Drawing from Bass and Avolio’s (Citation1994) Full Range Leadership Theory (FRLT) and Herzberg’s two-factor theory, the present study examined the association between academics’ perceived leadership styles employed by either their deans or head of departments on their job satisfaction as measured by the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). The study was quantitatively driven with a cross-sectional survey design. A convenient sample of academics (N = 411) of which (Men: N = 310, Women: N = 101) from four Tanzanian universities responded to a Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5x short) and MSQ. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed by using SPSS version 25 to detect significant predictors of academics’ job satisfaction. Results demonstrated that both perceived transformational and transactional leadership styles statistically significantly related to academics’ job satisfaction over and above their marital status, gender, age, academic rank, and institutional type. While the study has both practical and policy implications, it situates these findings into a broader management and governance literature of higher education leadership.