The Effect of Leadership and Trust on Organizational Commitment

of Teachers

Arcadius Benawa

, Henricus Bambang Triantono

, Jamson Siallagan

Character Building Development Center, Mass Communication Program, Communication Department, Faculty of

Economics & Communication, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia

Accounting Information System Program, School of Information System, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia

Character Building Development Center, Accounting Information System Program, School of Information System, Bina

Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia

Keywords: Leadership, Trust, Organizational Commitment.

Abstract: The research aims at obtaining the information related to the effect of Leadership and Trust on the

organizational commitment of the teachers. The reason for doing this research is to help the school on the

importance of Leadership and Trust in order to increase the organizational commitment of teachers.The

method used is a survey by using a structured interviews with a sample of 75 teachers of Marsudirini Yunior

High School. The data collected were processed by path analysis. The result showed that there are direct

positive effects of Leadership and Trust on the organizational commitment. It implies that the research has

found two factors, namely leadership and trust, which should be taken into account for the improvement of

the organizational commitment of the teachers.

1 INTRODUCTION

Teacher’s organizational commitment is crucial for

the survival of private schools. In reality, there are

still many teachers lacking sufficient organizational

commitment, including the teachers of Marsudirini

junior high schools in Jakarta, Bogor, and Bekasi.

Some indicators show that they teach to perform their

day-to-day duty simply. They do not thoroughly go

through the instructional process. They are reluctant

to develop their teaching skills and improve their

mastery of instructional materials. It is why very

important and urgent even interesting to conduct a

scientific research on this phenomenon, particularly

in the perspectives of Leadership and Trust.

Hopefully, the result of this research can give untility

to help the school relate with the importance of

Leadership and Trust in order to increase the

organizational commitment of the teachers.

Some research problems relevant to this issue

include: (1) whether leadership has a direct positive

effect on organizational commitment, (2) whether the

Trust has a direct positive effect on the organizational

commitment.

The objective of this research is to empirically

find an answer to the direct positive effect of

Leadership and Trust on the organizational

commitment.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Colquitt, LePine, and Wesson (2011) define

Leadership as the use of power and influence to direct

the activities of followers toward goal achievement.

While Kinicki and Kreitner (2010) define Leadership

as a process whereby an individual influences others

to achieve a common goal. Robbins and Judge (2012)

define leadership as the ability to influence a group

toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals. As

to McShane and Glinow (2010), Leadership is about

changing, motivating, and enabling others to

contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the

organizations of which they are members. Stoner,

Freeman, and Gilbert (1995) said that Leadership is

the art of coordinating and motivating individuals and

groups to achieve the desired end. Mullins (2005)

formulates Leadership is a relationship through which

one person influences the behavior or actions of other

people. Gibson, Ivancevich, Donnelly, and

Konopaske (2009) explained that Leadership is an

Benawa, A., Triantono, H. and Siallagan, J.

The Effect of Leadership and Tr ust on Organizational Commitment of Teachers.

DOI: 10.5220/0009197800200024

In Proceedings of the 2nd Economics and Business International Conference (EBIC 2019) - Economics and Business in Industrial Revolution 4.0, pages 20-24

ISBN: 978-989-758-498-5

 2021 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reser ved

attempt to use influence to motivate individuals to

accomplish some goal. Nelson and Quick (2006)

mention that Leadership in an organization is the

process of guiding and directing the behavior of

people in the work environment. Schermerhorn, Uhl-

Bien, and Osborn (2011) said that Leadership is the

process of influencing others and the process of

facilitating individual and collective efforts to

accomplish shared objectives.

Referring to the above experts’ explanation, it can

be synthesized that Leadership is any attempt made

be a leader to influence and direct someone or a group

of people by identifying, supporting, training or

developing, motivating or inspiring, making good

relationship, protecting, and providing feedback to

subordinates so as to be cooperative to attain the

organizational objectives.

Leadership is materialized through (1) influencing

and directing; (2) delegating job clearly; (3) guiding,

defining, and re-strengthening organizational policy;

(4) guiding the members to perform corporate vision

and mission; (5) providing input or advice for policy

implementation; (6) working actively both

individually or in group.

According to Colquitt, LePine, and Wesson (2011),

Trust is the willingness to be vulnerable to a trustee

based on positive expectations about the trustee’s

actions and intentions. Mullins (2005), describes

Trust as how can members of staff show that they can

be trusted if Trust is first placed in them. McShane

and Glinow (2010) say that Trust refers to the positive

expectations one person has towards another person

in situations involving risk. According to Robbins

and Judge (2012), Trust is a psychological state that

exists when you agree to make yourself vulnerable to

another because you have positive expectations about

how things are going to turn out. Kinicki and Kreitner

(2010), defined Trust as reciprocal faith in others’

intentions and behaviors.

Referring to the above explanations, it can be

synthesized that Trust is a positive expectation given

to authorized individuals or groups hoping that they

will produce positive results from the assurance given

by the authority.

The implementation of positive expectation from

the given authority includes (1) job assignment

provision, (2) job completion, (3) team solidity, (4)

effective communication, (5) idea development, (6)

fairness, (7) responsibility, (8) support, (9)

consistency, and (10) respect to each other.

Colquitt, LePine, and Wesson (2011), define

organizational commitment as the desire on the part

of an employee to remain a member of the

organization. According to Schermerhorn, Uhl-Bien,

& Osborn (2011), organizational commitment is the

loyalty of an individual to the organization.

According to Robbins and Judge (2012),

organizational commitment is the degree to which an

employee identifies with a particular organization and

its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the

organization. McShane and Glinow (2010) state that

organizational commitment is the employee’s

emotional attachment to, identification with, and

involvement in a particular organization. George and

Jones (2005) said that organizational commitment is

the collection of feelings and beliefs that people have

about their organization as a whole). Luthans (2005)

say that organizational commitment is (1) a strong

desire to remain a member of particular organization,

(2) a willingness to exert high levels of effort on

behalf of the organizational, (3) a definite belief in,

and acceptance of the values and goals of the

organization. Kinicki and Kreitner (2010) state that

organizational commitment reflects the extent to

which an individual identifies with an organization

and is committed to its goals. Gibson, Ivancevich,

Donnely, and Konopaske (2009) said that

commitment to the organization is a sense of

identification, loyalty, and involvement expressed by

an employee towards the organization or unit of the

organization.

Referring to the experts’ citations above, it can be

synthesized that the organizational commitment is the

loyalty of a member to keep their existence as the

organization member to meet the organization

objective and intention.

The commitment is demonstrated by (1) having

emotional bond to the organization; (2) having self-

identification to the organization; (3) having rational

ties to the organization; (4) having dependence for

needs to the organization; (5) having moral relate

with the organization; and (6) having loyalty to the

organization.

3 RESEARCH METHOD

This research used survey method. The population

consisted of 92 teachers of Marsudirini Junior High

Schools in Jakarta, Bogor, and Bekasi. After each

participant has agreed with the researcher to honestly

complete the questionnaire in a face-to-face forum,

then 75 teachers set as samples taken through simple

random sampling. Data was collected using a

questionnaire.

The validity test used Pearson’s Product Moment

Correlation technique. Criteria of one item is valid

The Effect of Leadership and Trust on Organizational Commitment of Teachers

only when r

test

> r

table

with  = 0.05, and df= n-1. The

reliability test used Alpha Cronbach’s formulation.

Analysis technique used in the research is (1)

descriptive statistic with average score, median,

modus, standard deviation, and cumulative frequency

distribution; (2) referential statistic using path

analysis; (3) analysis requirement test.

4 FINDING AND DISCUSSION

Having collected descriptive statistic data and been

through analysis requirement test dealing with

normality, significance, and linearity, the finding

results are described as follow:

Figure 1: Sturctural Model of variables X

and X

to X

Explanation:

= Leadership

= Trust

= Organizational Commitment

Leadership effects directly on the organizational

commitment with path coefficient = 0.224 and t

test

(3.373) > t

table

(1.67) with signifance 0.001 < 

(0.05), so H

rejected dan H

accepted. So, Leadership

has a positive direct effect on organizational

commitment.

Trust has a positive direct effect on organizational

commitment with path coefficient = 0.359 and t

test

(4.320) > t

table

(1.67) with significance 0.000 < 

(0.05), so H

rejected dan H

accepted. So, Trust has

a positive direct effect on organizational

commitment.

The path analysis result shows that the try-out

result supports the model. It implies that the model

built in this research can be proven empirically, and

thus, it is an acceptable model. The model declares

that there is an exogenous variable of a positive direct

effect on the endogenous variables. The research

result, in fact, can prove all hypotheses in this

research.

Leadership has a positive direct effect on

Organizational Commitment. This shows that

improvement of Leadership quality will, therefore,

improve the organizational commitment of teachers

in Marsudirini Junior High Schools in Jakarta, Bogor,

and Bekasi. The research result has verified that

Leadership has a positive direct effect on

organizational commitment. This finding indicates

that the level of organizational commitment of

teacher is defined, among other things, by leadership

factor. If Leadership is well implemented, it will

improve the organizational commitment. On the

contrary, when Leadership fails to be well-

implemented, organizational commitment will be

degrading.

Leadership has a significant influence on the

organizational commitment. The similar finding

presented by Daft and Dorothy (2003), Drafke

(2009), and Greenberg and Baron (2003), and

Robbins and Judge (2012). They showed that good

leadership allows subordinates to show their best

performance and gain respect and prosperity from

their performance to encourage subordinate

organizational commitment as members of the

organization. According to Slocum and Hellriegel

(2007) organizational commitment is the strength of

employees in identifying their involvement in a part

of the organization that can be marked, including their

acceptance of the values and objectives of the

organization, their readiness to strive earnestly on

behalf of and for the sake of the organization, and his

desire to maintain his membership in the

organization.

This notion goes along with the study conducted

by Walumbwa et al. (Walumbwa, Orwa, Wang, &

Lawler, 2005). The research indicates that a leader

with transformative Leadership has a strong effect on

the employee’s organizational commitment.

Another research also proves that employees

perceiving their superior that has participatory

Leadership will be more committed to their

organization (Yousef, 2000). Similarly, another

research shows that there is a significant effect of

Leadership on the organizational commitment. This

underlines that Leadership has indeed a positive

direct effect on the organizational commitment

(Avolio, Zhu, Koh, & Bhatia, 2004).

Such research result emphasizes that Leadership

in an organization has significant meaning in building

the members’ organizational commitment. The

importance of Leadership that affects this

commitment is caused by the fact that a leader has

several roles leading to organizational commitment

development. The role of a leader here, among other

0.224

0.359

0.583

0.417

EBIC 2019 - Economics and Business International Conference 2019

things, is the motivator for the members of the

organization. Thus, if this function is well performed,

a leader can motivate his or her assistant to work at

their best for the organization. Besides, if the

behavior of a leader well accommodates the

subordinate’s needs, expectation, and interest, the

subordinate will have positive perception of the

leader, which in return will encourage the

subordinates to provide support to the leader in the

attempt to attain the organization objective by

performing their job at their best. The voluntary

support given by the assistants here indicates the

subordinates’ organizational commitment. This

condition is also likely to happen at school. A good

school principal can help develop organizational

commitment in the teachers to achieve the

organization or school’s objective. For this reason,

the research result enriches empirical findings on the

leadership effect towards organizational commitment

through different research settings conducted in

Marsudirini Junior High Schools in Jakarta, Bogor,

and Bekasi.

Trust has a positive direct effect on organizational

commitment. This shows that the growing Trust will

lead to the ever increasing organizational

commitment among the teachers of Marsudirini

Junior High School in Jakarta, Bogor, and Bekasi.

The research result has proven that Trust has a

positive direct effect on the organizational

commitment. This finding accentuates that the level

of teachers' organizational commitment is influenced,

among other things, by trust factor. When the

corporate Trust is high, the organizational

commitment will go up. On the other hand, when the

corporate Trust is low, the organizational

commitment will decrease.

The finding that Trust influenced the

organizational commitment showed by Slocum and

Hellriegel (2007). They said that Trust in the

organization is part of organizational commitment,

namely the strength of employees in identifying their

involvement in the organization, which can be

characterized by, among others, acceptance of

corporate values and objectives, preparedness to

strive earnestly on behalf of the organization, and the

desire to maintain membership in the organization or

become part of the organization. Thus, Trust can

bring or become an antecedent for organizational

commitment.

The power of Trust in organizational commitment

is significant. This goes along with the research

results conducted by Yilmaz (2008), which shows

that in general Trust has a positive and significant

influence on the organizational commitment. This

indicates that trust affects the organizational

commitment.

Such research result indicates that trust can

elevate organizational commitment. This can take

place when the existence of organizational

commitment factor as the internal factor is influenced

by other internal factors such as trust. An organization

with integrity, consistence, and openness tends to

strengthen emotional bond and develop positive

attitude among the organization members. For this

reason, it is understandable that organizational trust

has an important role to grow organizational

commitment. This research result enriches the

empirical finding given the fact that trust influences

directly the organizational commitment on the basis

of different research setting, namely Marsudirini

Junior High Schools in Jakarta, Bogor, and Bekasi.

5 CONCLUSION

Leadership gives positive direct effect on

organizational commitment; and trust has positive

direct effect on organizational commitment.

Therefore, school principals need to conduct self-

evaluation to identify their setbacks in their

Leadership. They should be motivated to build their

Leadership competence to perform their Leadership

effectively.

And the school management needs to show

honesty and integrity in a bid to manage the school

and treat the teachers well. Integrity and honesty are

the crucial keys to develop organizational trust that

influences the organizational commitment of the

teachers. For this reason, the school management

should apply ethical school governance principles to

establish corporate Trust among the teachers in SMP

Marsudirini in Jakarta, Bogor, and Bekasi to build

their organizational commitment.

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