Effect of Followership Style on Organizational Commitment: A Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) Approach

Abstract

According to Kelley (1992), followers play a significant role in approximately 80% of an organization's overall performance. Followers' actions and attitudes are vital to execution and goal achievement. Nevertheless, the concept of followership has received limited attention in academic research. Therefore, this research aims to provide a valuable contribution to the academic field by conducting an empirical investigation on followership style and organizational commitment in Sarawak, Malaysia. The purpose of this research is to identify prevalent teachers’ followership styles in Sarawak. The study also analyse the relationship between followership dimensios and teachers' organizational commitment. To conduct this study, a total of 899 primary school teachers were involved as respondents. To measure the followership style, The Revised of Kelly Followership Questionnaire (KFQ-R) which has been revised by Kevin et al. (2019) was found to be the most suitable for the purpose of the study. While the Three Component Model Employee Commitment Survey (TCM-ECS) questionnaire developed by Meyer and Allen (2004) was used to measure teachers' organizational commitment. This study uses quantitative methods and the data analysed descriptively (mean, standard deviation) by using IBM Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences 2.9 (SPSS). Smart Partial least squares-structural equation modelling (Smart PLS SEM v.4.0.9.3) was used to test the hypotheses. The findings of this study show that the most common followership style among teachers is exemplary followership style. Also, the results indicated a significant positive correlation between follower's active engagement dimension (beta value 0.417) and follower's critical thinking dimension (beta value 0.112) with organizational commitment. Overall, this study produces a model to show the contribution of followership style to organizational commitment. The study's findings have practical implications for leadership practices and tactics targeted at improving leader-follower interactions and emphasizes the need of studying followership in different circumstances to recognize their crucial role in attaining organizational commitment. While there are limitations to consider, such as the need for further research to explore cross-cultural variations and contextual factors, the insights gained from this study offer practical implications for bridging the gap between research and practice in education, ultimately contributing to the continuous improvement of teaching and learning experiences.