University Students’ Perception of Transformational Leadership of the University President in Korea: The Role of Students’ Personality, Affect, and Affective Commitment to the University

Abstract

This study explores how university students’ personality and positive or negative affect influence their perception of transformational leadership of the university president. It further examines how the level of students’ affective commitment to the university moderates the relationship. Survey data were collected from 141 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a large public university in South Korea. The students answered survey questions to measure their big-five personalities, positive and negative affect, affective commitment to the university, and their perception of the university president’s transformational leadership. The results of hierarchical regression analyses show that (a) students’ positive affect is positively related to their perception of the university president’s transformational leadership, after controlling for the effect of the students’ personality and that (b) students’ affective commitment to the university moderates the relationship between negative affect and perception of transformational leadership of the university president. This study sheds light on the dynamic, reciprocal process of the social construction of university leadership with an emphasis on students’ affective state and personality traits as critical factors in understanding distant leadership.