Leadership, Empowerment, and Attitude Outcomes

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the structural relationship betweenperceived transformational leadership, structural empowerment, psychologicalempowerment, and the attitude outcomes of job satisfaction and organizationalcommitment among teachers. Questionnaires were administered to154 publicschool teachers from a central province of Thailand. Path Analysis was used totest the hypothesized research model. The results revealed that the hypothesizedmodel did not provide an acceptable fit to the empirical data. However, afteradding the direct relationship between structural empowerment and jobsatisfaction, the model showed a good fit. Perceived transformational leadershipof the direct supervisors was positively related to teachers’ psychologicalempowerment, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Structuralempowerment was positively correlated to psychological empowerment and jobsatisfaction. Psychological empowerment was positively related to both attitudeoutcomes of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Moreover,psychological empowerment played a mediating role in the relationship betweenperceived transformational leadership and both attitude outcomes. Similarly,psychological empowerment mediated the relationship between structuralempowerment and both attitude outcomes. The adjusted model accounted for the 38percent of the variance in job satisfaction and 28 percent of the variance inorganizational commitment.

Keywords: transformational leadership, empowerment, attitude outcomes, teacher