Transformational Leadership in Higher Education Institutions and
Employee Satisfaction Interventions
Laily Fardillah
1,2
, Budi Prasetyo
1,2
and Rizca Yunike Putri
3
1
Master of Human Resource Developiment Postgraduate School Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia
2
Faculty of Social and Political Science, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia
3
Faculty of Social and Political Science, The University of Wijaya Kusuma Surabaya, Indonesia
Keywords: Employee Empowerment, Employee Satisfaction Interventions, Higher Education, Ttransformational
Leadership.
Abstract: Transformational leadership is one form of leadership that is widely believed to have colored a new
paradigm of thinking about the essence of leadership in the era of globalization. The motivation is given
aims to gain support and trust from employees. Employee empowerment by leaders with transformational
style is an important component in developing the potential of employee performance improvement. The
purpose of this research is the magnitude of the direct influence of the transformational leadership style on
the commitment of employees of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences Airlangga University. The
analysis technique used is path analysis using SPSS 13.0. The results of this data processing show that the
direct influence of the transformational leadership style on organizational commitment is weaker than the
indirect effect of transformational leadership on organizational commitment through job satisfaction
variables. Thus, it can be concluded that the influence of transformational leadership style to organizational
commitment through job satisfaction.
1 INTRODUCTION
Transformational leadership is leadership capable of
bringing about change in every individual involved
or for the organization to achieve higher
performance. Four types of transformational
behavior (Bass 1985) are charisma, intellectual
stimulation, individual attention, and inspiration.
Burns (1978) describes transformational
leadership is a process whereby leaders and
employees together mutually improve and develop
morality and motivation. Bass (1985) describes
transformational leadership as leadership that
enables followers of feelings of trust, admiration,
loyalty, and respect for leaders, and the term
motivation to do more than the employee expects.
Results that match the results keep employees
further from the outcome of the task, persuading
employees to put more importance on the interests
of the team or organization of interest and according
to their higher needs.
In transformational leadership, leaders build
subordinate consciousness will follow up and get the
task carried out by conveying his vision to his
subordinates so that they work with his personal
interests and encourage changes towards the
interests of the organization. Go on growing trust,
pride, loyalty, commitment and respect to the boss.
Job satisfaction is the individual's emotional
response to his or her job or place of work derives
from the experience of his work. According Luthans
(2007: 141) job satisfaction is a sense of comfort or
positive emotional state resulting from the
assessment of work or work experience. Employee
job satisfaction can be given to several factors.
Among them by looking at the important factors that
encourage employee job satisfaction. The aspect of
employee job satisfaction according to Luthans
(2006: 243) consists of the work itself,
payroll/salary, promotion opportunities, supervision,
working conditions according to Robbins (2003: 85)
consists of what is fair (cooperation), work that
mentally challenges (mentally challenging work),
supportive colleagues, and supporting working
conditions. Important factors that drive job
satisfaction can also affect how committed
employees are to the company.
Fardillah, L., Prasetyo, B. and Yunike Putri, R.
Transformational Leadership in Higher Education Institutions and Employee Satisfaction Interventions.
DOI: 10.5220/0007550307210724
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference Postgraduate School (ICPS 2018), pages 721-724
ISBN: 978-989-758-348-3
Copyright
c
 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
721
Employees who have all the needs are met will
achieve job satisfaction and have a commitment to
the company. The high commitment of employees
can influence the development of the company. The
commitment will make employees support all
activities of the company and make employees feel
the company has a company. The existence of a high
commitment to the company, employees will be
more productive in work.
Researchers see a change in leadership style
taking place in FISIP Unair as an interesting point
that can be used as a case for the relationship of
leadership strategy to intervention in this regard. As
one of the faculties of Airlangga University which
have changed its status to State Owned Legal Entity
(BHMN) since 2006, of course, in FISIP Unair also
experience style. BHMN status request is. Lifestyle
at the university level and faculty level in Unair
environment.
2 RESEARCH METHOD
To know the influence of transformational
leadership style to job satisfaction and
organizational commitment this research using
quantitative approach. In a quantitative approach,
the researcher uses the rationalization process of a
phenomenon that occurs and measures the variable
(variable indicator) that is being investigated and
finally the quantitative approach tries to make a
generalized conclusion. Variables used in this study
there are two types, namely independent variables,
and dependent variables. The independent variable is
the transformational leadership style (X). The
intervening variable is employee satisfaction (Z).
And the dependent variable is the organizational
commitment (Y).
Measurement of organizational commitment
variables based on respondents' answers or ratings
on statements in questionnaires whose value is
determined on a Likert scale, with the following
explanation: (1) Value 1 represents a strongly
disagreeable answer; (2) The 2nd value represents
the disapproving answer; (3) The value 3 represents
the answer quite agree; (4) Value 4 represents the
agreed answer; (5) The value of 5 represents a
strongly agreeable answer.
Primary data collection was done by
questionnaire and direct observation. Secondary data
in this research include the general description of the
research subject, organizational structure of research
subject as well as explanation of authority and job
title.
The number of population in the study were 50
respondents covering employees of Faculty of Social
and Political Sciences Airlangga University with
details of 56 employees and 4 head sub-section
consisting of Head of Administration Academic,
Head of Student Affairs, Head of Finance and Head
of Human Resources.
3 RELATION OF
TRANSFORMATIONAL
LEADERSHIP (X) ON WORK
SATISFACTION (Z)
The results showed that the transformational
leadership style has a significant effect on job
satisfaction on the employees of the Faculty of
Social and Political Sciences Airlangga University.
It is based on the test results with the value of
standard regression coefficient (beta) 0.784 with a
significance value of 0.000. These results illustrate
that a leader must be able to appreciate and accept
individual differences in terms of individual interest
needs, for example some employees want more
encouragement, employees want more leadership
attention to employees for example: making sure
that the employee is able to complete the task, faced
by employees and encouraging employees to be
more enthusiastic employees in completing the task
and leaders always provide direction in completing
the task. The leadership also raises the followers'
awareness of the issues and influences the followers
to view the issues as new perspectives.
Transformational leadership style strives to
create a conducive climate for the development of
innovation and creativity of employees, resulting in
the emergence of a strong sense of ownership and
will make employees happy in working and doing
all the duty to perform tasks without feeling forced
to create job satisfaction.
4 RELATION OF WORK
SATISFACTION (Z) TO
ORGANIZATIONAL
COMMITMENT (Y)
The results showed that job satisfaction has a
significant effect on organizational commitment at
the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences
Airlangga University. This is based on test results
with the value of standard regression coefficient
ICPS 2018 - 2nd International Conference Postgraduate School
722
(beta) 0.708 with a significance value of 0.000.
These results show the higher the employee job
satisfaction of the Faculty of Social and Political
Sciences of the University, the higher the
commitment of employees. Job satisfaction has a
positive and significant impact on organizational
commitment. Organizational commitment shows a
power of a person in identifying one's desire,
involvement, and membership in an organization.
The emergence of organizational commitment will
lead to a strong sense of ownership of the
organization.
5 RELATION OF
TRANSFORMATIONAL
LEADERSHIP (X) TO
ORGANIZATIONAL
COMMITMENT (Y)
The results showed that the transformational
leadership style significantly affected the
organizational commitment to the employees of the
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Airlangga
University. It is based on the test results with a
significance value of 0.683 below the significance
value of 0.000. The results are supported by the
existing conditions in the Faculty of Social and
Political Sciences Airlangga University can be seen
from the characteristics and leadership behavior that
inspire employees. The leader's charisma explains as
a result of employee perceptions about the quality of
leader behavior. Charismatic leaders are able to
inspire employees about the form of loyalty and
obedience beyond their own interests, if an
employee feels admirable towards his leader, then
the leader will be easily accepted by employees in
various aspects of the work in the organization, a
number of leadership researchers stated that the
sense of awe is a positive response of employees to
leadership transformational.
This means an effective leader influences his
followers to have greater optimism, confidence, and
commitment to the organization's goals and mission.
Thus, the behavioral ways of leaders in directing
their followers will have an effect on employees'
organizational commitment, thus supporting
previous research on the influence of leadership
style on organizational commitment (Desianty,
2005).
Leaders with a transformational style encourage
more employees to come up with new ideas and
creative solutions to the problems at hand. This
theory is reinforced by Bass (1998) who states
"transformational leaders will always try to build
and develop the potential of individuals to make
them into independent followers". Leaders with
transformational leadership styles tend to have
inspirational traits that motivate employees in work,
but influence does not only come from charismatic
leaders. With a leadership style, transformational
leadership applied then the attachment arises
between leaders and employees so as to facilitate
can increase the commitment of organization.
6 THE EFFECT OF THE
LEADERSHIP OF
TRANSFORMATIONAL
LEADERSHIP (X) ON
ORGANIZATIONAL
COMMITMENT (Y) THROUGH
THE SATISFACTION OF WORK
(Z)
From the results that have been done earlier, it can
be seen that the style of transformational leadership
of organizational commitment through job
satisfaction of 0.148 can be seen also that the
transformational leadership style variables affected
significantly to job satisfaction with a significance
value of 0.000 influence on organizational
commitment. to employees of the Faculty of Social
and Political Sciences Airlangga University.
The transformational leadership style has a
positive and significant impact on employees'
organizational commitment. Leaders can be an
inspiration in work and determine the direction and
purpose of the organization. Leaders can
demonstrate their ability to delegate responsibility
with caution and instil a strong sense of ownership
of their employees. It is this leader's attitude that
affects employees to be able to commit to their
organization. This is supported also by the
descriptive statistical data of the respondents
working year where the number of respondents who
work more than 5 years by 84% indicates that most
employees have a high commitment that makes them
loyal to the organization.
Based on the results of the research show that
hypothesis testing is statistically proposed supported
by previous theory. Job satisfaction has a positive
and significant influence on organizational
commitment to support the results of research. So
this supports the research of Nafisah (2005) and
Transformational Leadership in Higher Education Institutions and Employee Satisfaction Interventions
723
Rivandi (2005) about the positive relationship
between job satisfaction with organizational
commitment.
7 CONCLUSION
The influence of transformational leadership style to
organizational commitment with job satisfaction as
an intervening variable (study at Faculty of Social
and Political Sciences of Airlangga University). This
research concludes that the four hypotheses
proposed in this research are all accepted.
Transformational leadership style (X) has a
positive and significant effect on job satisfaction (Z)
in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences
Airlangga University. Leadership style becomes an
important factor affecting work behavior such as
satisfaction and performance. The influence of job
satisfaction (Z) has a positive and significant effect
on organizational commitment (Y) has a standard
regression coefficient (beta) of 0.708; meaning that
the better the job satisfaction of employees of the
Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of the
University the higher the commitment of the
employee organization. The influence of
transformational leadership style (X) has a positive
and significant effect on organizational commitment
(Y) has a standardized regression coefficient (beta)
of 0.683. The indirect influence of transformational
leadership style (X) on organizational commitment
(Y) through job satisfaction (Z) has a positive and
significant effect is 0.332 x 0.448 = 0.149 where the
value is smaller than the direct influence between X
to Y of 0.683.
Evidently, the transformational leadership style
has a positive and significant influence both on job
satisfaction and organizational commitment of
employees in the Faculty, such leadership model
will certainly contribute positively to the
improvement of FISIP performance as an
organization. Management of employees by
effective organizations. If this transformational
leadership style practice turns out to increase
organizational commitment to encourage the
achievement of their job satisfaction, then this
leadership style practice may also be an example
that needs to be disseminated to other units within
the University.
The influence of transformational leadership
style on organizational commitment with job
satisfaction can be concluded that transformational
leadership style greatly influences work behavior
such as job satisfaction. These results illustrate that a
leader is able to appreciate and give encouragement
to its employees and strive to create a climate
conducive to the development of innovation and
employee creativity that will make employees feel
happy at work and do all the obligations to carry out
tasks without feeling forced so as to create job
satisfaction.
Leaders with transformational leadership styles
tend to have inspirational traits that motivate
employees to work, but internship does not only
come from charismatic leaders. With the
transformational leadership style applied, there is an
attachment between leaders and employees so that a
strong commitment to the organization arises
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