An empirical study on the effect of leadership styles on employee wellbeing and organizational outcomes within an Australian regional university

Leadership has increasingly become a major research focus in the corporate sector as well as in the higher education sector (HES). Previous studies have shown that different leadership styles play a significant role in promoting both employee wellbeing and organizational outcomes. However, there is a lack of clear understanding of how leadership, employee wellbeing and organizational outcome such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention interact together in the HES context, particularly within Australian regional university settings. The HES has two distinct staff cohorts, academic and professional, who have a stake in tertiary education leadership and management that further add to the complexities of leadership within the sector. Moreover, research into HES leadership uses many different leadership theories with results primarily focused on academic leadership. More expansive and pluralist approaches are necessary if we are to better understand the contextual complexities of leadership in the current HES. A review of leadership studies literature also suggests that researchers have either focused on the relationship between a specific leadership style and well-being; leadership styles and organizational outcomes"Ÿ or the relationship between wellbeing and organizational outcomes, but rarely do empirical studies examine all three concurrently. For a complex organization such as a university, an effective way of examining leadership may be by applying leadership theories that examine a diverse range of leadership styles concurrently. The Full Range of Leadership Theory (FLRT) examines transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles within a single continuum that may provide a way to concurrently examine how these differing leadership styles may impact on leadership effectiveness in the HES context. The proposed PhD research project that this paper draws upon aims to examine the lived experiences of leadership amongst both academic and professional staff working in an Australian regional university by exploring the relationships between leadership style, employee wellbeing and organizational outcomes. The proposed project takes a mixed method approach using both qualitative and quantitative methods and analysis. Given the timing of the project, the focus of the paper and presentation for the Australasian Conference on Business and Social Sciences 2015 will be a position paper exploring the literature review and research design for this project.