Leadership behavior, learning organization culture and employee involvement climate effecting organizational effectiveness : a study of Thai energy sector

Abstract

The objectives of this dissertation are (1) to identify characteristics oftransformational leadership behaviors, learning organization culture, employeeinvolvement climate and organizational effectiveness among four main publicenterprises within the Thai energy sector, (2) to explore the relationships amongtransformational leadership behaviors, learning organization culture, and employeeinvolvement climate on organizational effectiveness within the Thai energy sector, (3)to propose a structural model of organizational effectiveness regarding the selectedfactors namely transformational leadership behaviors, learning organization culture,and employee involvement climate, and (4) to provide essential suggestions andrecommendations that help to improve organizational effectiveness through theselected factors namely transformational leadership behaviors, learning organizationculture, and employee involvement climate within the Thai energy sector. Four majorThai energy enterprises were considered as the units of analysis for the study whichrepresent the Thai Energy Sector. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed byemploying Quota Sampling technique via HR departments and face-to-face basis.About 476 questionnaires were usable, i.e. Electricity Generating Authority ofThailand (136), Provincial Electricity Authority (98), Metropolitan ElectricityAuthority (127) and PTT Public Company Limited (115), accounting for a 83% returnrate. To achieve the research objectives, the study utilized descriptive statistics andthe Structural Equation Model.

The findings presented that Thai energy sector’s employees tend to score highvalues of transformational leadership behaviors, learning organizational culture,employee involvement climate and organizational effectiveness with the exception oftransactional leadership behaviors as showed in the Mean values. In addition, theywere found to have both direct and indirect effects on organizational effectivenesswith the exception of transformational leadership behaviors which had no direct effecton organizational effectiveness. The high values of standardized regression werefound in the direct relationships between transactional leadership behaviors andlearning organizational culture, learning organizational culture and employeeinvolvement climate, employee involvement climate and organizational effectivenessand the indirect relationships between learning organizational culture andorganizational effectiveness as mediated by employee involvement climate.

In Structural Equation Model analysis, overall all constructs were found tohave acceptable construct reliability scores within an acceptable range of factorloadings with the exceptions of LF. The highest reliability score was from the learningorganizational culture construct and the lowest score was from the transactionalleadership construct. The study developed the structural model of organizationaleffectiveness within the Thai energy sector with the acceptable fit scores from severalmodel fit indices (χ2 = 448.806, p< 0.001, CMIN/df = 2.704, GFI = 916, CFI = 975,RMR = .048, RMSEA = .060, NFI = .961, TLI = .969). After testing of thehypotheses, both direct and indirect effects were found in all constructs with theexception of a direct effect between transformational leadership and organizationaleffectiveness. According to the findings, the Thai energy enterprises are suggested tofocus, not only on leadership behaviors but also other factors as well, such as learningorganizational culture and employee involvement climate, in order to improveorganizational effectiveness. For further research, qualitative research should be doneto confirm the results focusing on a wide range of informants such as leaders at alllevels, along with other stakeholders.