Leadership skill, leadership style and job commitment among academic staff of Nigerian universities: the moderating effects of employee's attitude and work environment

The study aims to determine the moderating effects of employee’s
attitude and work environment on the relationship between leadership skill and
leadership style, and employee’s job commitment among academic staff of
Nigerian universities. The results of this study would enable the Nigerian
government to develop strategies to help lecturers develop more interest in
research. The study employs cross-sectional survey design, with simple random
sampling, to collect data from 340 academic staff of three universities in the
northern, eastern and western regions of Nigeria. Descriptive statistics and
Partial Least Square (Smart PLS) were used to analyse data. The results
indicate that transformational leadership style is positively related to
employee’s job commitment and that attitude moderates between transactional
leadership style and employee’s job commitment. The study suggests that
appropriate leadership (from heads of departments) and adequate funding (from
government) could engender more research commitments among scholars at
Nigerian universities.