GOAL CLARITY IN PRIMARY EDUCATION: The role of Transformational Leadership, Employee Motivation and Job Performance

Aim: The lack of empirical evidence to support the interaction between theories on transformational leadership, goal clarity, job performance and employee motivation makes it necessary to obtain this. The dataset is used to get more insight into these interactions in the field of educational settings. Methods: Data was collected through two surveys, a self-perceived leadership survey, and an employee-perceived leadership survey. The first was distributed to school principals only, who in turn were asked to distribute the employee-perceived survey to at least five of their direct employees (N = 208). To test the hypotheses, multivariate linear regression analyses and a moderated mediation regression analysis were conducted. Results: H1, H2 and H3 are accepted, as the linear regression analyses prove there is a statistically significant correlation. Employee motivation does have a mediating effect and partly explains the indirect effect between goal clarity and job performance....Show moreAim: The lack of empirical evidence to support the interaction between theories on transformational leadership, goal clarity, job performance and employee motivation makes it necessary to obtain this. The dataset is used to get more insight into these interactions in the field of educational settings. Methods: Data was collected through two surveys, a self-perceived leadership survey, and an employee-perceived leadership survey. The first was distributed to school principals only, who in turn were asked to distribute the employee-perceived survey to at least five of their direct employees (N = 208). To test the hypotheses, multivariate linear regression analyses and a moderated mediation regression analysis were conducted. Results: H1, H2 and H3 are accepted, as the linear regression analyses prove there is a statistically significant correlation. Employee motivation does have a mediating effect and partly explains the indirect effect between goal clarity and job performance. Transformational leadership does not have a moderating effect on the relationship between goal clarity and employee motivation. Also, there is no significant moderated mediation effect for the proposed model. H4 and H5 are thus rejected. Conclusion: The analysis confirms the indirect effect of employee motivation in the relation between goal clarity and job performance. Goal clarity provides employees with a clear and specific goal. Knowing the expected tasks increases motivation and therefore their job performance. According to the moderated mediation regression analysis, there is no significant moderated mediation in our proposed conceptual model. Transformational leaders do not have the expected positive effect on employee motivation. The results are in contrast with the theory on transformational leadership, as it is argued that transformational leaders have a motivating and enriching effect on employees through their abilities to support, communicating the organization's mission, and stimulating (Bass & Riggio, 2006).Show less

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GOAL CLARITY IN PRIMARY EDUCATION: The role of Transformational Leadership, Employee Motivation and Job Performance