The Relationship of Principals/Directors’ Leadership Styles, as Perceived by the Faculty, to the Job Satisfaction of the Faculty Members in a Public University of Punjab, Pakistan

The purposes of the study are to identify the leadership styles (transformational, transactional and laissez-faire) of the campus principals/divisional directors of a public university in Pakistan, examine the relationship between these leadership styles and the faculty’s job satisfaction, investigate which elements of the faculty’s job satisfaction are influenced/not influenced by the leader, explore which leadership style is conducive/barrier to the faculty’s job satisfaction, and define the role of a leader in enhancing the faculty’s job satisfaction. The study adopted a mixed methods approach, and all the 287 faculty members of the university were included in the sample to collate quantitative data through two questionnaires, whereas to generate qualitative data 15 faculty members were interviewed through the semi-structured protocol. The findings suggest that the transformational leadership style is comparatively being more often exercised by the leaders of the case public university in Pakistan, followed by the transactional leadership style, while the laissez-faire leadership style is the least practised. There are significant relationships between leadership styles (transformational, transactional and laissez-faire) and the faculty’s intrinsic, extrinsic and overall job satisfaction. The transformational leadership style, in relation to the transactional and laissez-faire styles, has a strong positive and statistically significant effect on faculty’s job satisfaction. Whereas, the laissez-faire leadership style, relatively, has weak positive and statistically insignificant effect on the job satisfaction of faculty members. The transactional leadership style, on the other hand, has comparatively weak negative and statistically insignificant effect on faculty’s job satisfaction. Most of the faculty job satisfaction elements related to the institution, leader and job are influenced by the leader; whereas, several factors that are more linked with the faculty members themselves, their colleagues and students are not influenced by the leader. The authoritative and laissez-faire leadership styles have been considered to be barriers to the faculty’s job satisfaction, whereas the participative, transformational and transactional (first dimension) leadership styles have been perceived as conducive and necessary to be exercised in order to enhance the faculty’s job satisfaction. Some implications for theory and practice are offered and suggestions for future research are proposed.