Mediating Role of Leadership Style on Organizational Culture and Total Quality Management

Abstract

Scholars consider leadership style as a powerful tool for improving school managers’
commitment on total quality management (TQM), yet few studies have empirically examined
the linkages on organizational culture, leadership styles, and TQM in tertiary institutions.
This study determined the mediating role of leadership style on organizational culture and
TQM. The researcher employed the descriptive correlational design to analyze the level of
organizational culture, the extent of leadership style as mediating variable, the extent of TQM
in education as perceived by the respondents, and the relationship between those variables
among school managers. There were 295 school managers from 13 tertiary institutions in
Asia who responded to the study. The results of the study showed that the respondents have
very high practices of organizational traits of involvement, adaptability, consistency, and
mission with an indirect effect on leadership style. The extent of the respondents’ TQM is
high on the following dimensions: a process-systems approach, customer-supplier focus,
consistent quality leadership, continuous improvement and self-evaluation .The extent of
leadership styles in both transformational and transactional as practiced by managers is high.
However, the organizational culture had no direct effect on TQM. Thus, leadership style fully
mediates organizational culture and TQM. Further, the school managers are committed to
TQM in education regardless of age, civil status, educational attainment, and years of
experience. As a contribution to the mediating mechanism, the emerging model showed that
transformational and transactional being the components of leadership styles have loadings of
.89 and .49, respectively. This means that the respondents’ leadership style practices have
corresponding weights of 64.49% of transformational and 35.51% of transactional leadership
style to fully mediate on the relationship between organizational culture and TQM. This
research therefore, indicates the significance of the mediating role of leadership style on
organizational culture and TQM in tertiary institutions. The outcome of this study shall be
utilized as basis for conducting seminar-workshops and training programs. The study will
contribute to future research on other dimensions on OC, LS and moderating variables in
relation to TQM.