A study of leadership in educational institutions under the dual system of private vocational education administration : its effects on personnel's behaviors

Abstract

The research aimed to build understanding about the relationship between leadership applied to executives of private vocational educational institutes in the dual system and behaviors of personnel through some key variables, such as needs satisfaction, relationship quality, and loyalty. The first objective of the study was to explore types of leadership which affected loyalty. The second objective was to explore behaviors which were influential to loyalty. The third objective was to explore the dimension of needs satisfaction which affected the relationship quality. The fourth objective was to explore the relationship between leadership in educational institutes and needs satisfaction. The last objective was to explore the demographic characteristics and structure of educational institutes which affected job satisfaction through the structural equation modeling.

Then, the models were divided into 3 types as follows: The transformational leadership model; the instructional leadership model; and the combination of both leadership models. The multiple group analysis was conducted. The data were collected from personnel in private vocational educational institutes in the dual system, totaling 396 persons from all over Thailand, to explore which type of leadership to be adopted by executives so as to be appropriate with current administration. The findings of the study revealed that all of 3 leadership models could be properly applied because the construct validity of variables was suitable, the fitness of the models passed the criteria and configural invariance test. Afterwards, the structural equation modeling analysis was conducted by confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, and multiple regression analysis. It was found that each leadership model in educational institutes showed the positive relationship with personnel behaviors directly and indirectly, except that the variables of demography and structure of educational institutes were not influential to job satisfaction.

The findings of this study revealed that the theoretical framework of the study on leadership in educational institutes and the context of private vocational educational institutes in the dual system were consistent, and could be applied to behaviors of personnel in this educational system.