Trust and justice as mediators on transformational leadership, transactional leadership and organizational citizenship behavior of employees in higher education institution of Rajamangala University of Technology

Abstract

The purposes of this study were (1) to investigate the mediating role of trust and justice between transformational leadership (TFL) and transactional leadership (TSL), and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB); (2) to compare a proposed model’s differential effects of generations (generation X and generation Y) and the university’s employees (lecturers and staffs). The questionnaire was designed to collect data in this survey research, which was distributed to 470 Rajamangala University of Technology (RMUT)’s employees. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to report basic features of the data collected, and the structural equation modeling approach was employed to test the hypothesis in this study. The results indicated that trust and justice had a positively significant mediating effect on TFL and TSL, and OCB in the RMUT context. For generation’s comparative results, the TSL factor has a more positively significant effect on trust for generation X than generation Y, whereas justice has a more significant effect on OCB for generation Y than generation X. Finally, to compare the different effect result of RMUT’s employees, the support group significantly perceived the effect of TSL toward trust and justice on OCB more than the academics’ group. The results of this study contribute to support of the employees’ leadership in the higher education institution of RMUT. Moreover, for managerial implications, the insights for the leadership, trust, and justice aspects are powerful drivers to encourage RMUT to increase and achieve its optimal organizational performance.