Causal relationship analysis between leadership behavior, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions for employees of college athletic departments in Taiwan

The general problem was to investigate the causal relationship between perceived types of leadership, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction in order to examine turnover intentions for employees in selected college athletic departments in Taiwan and to advance the understanding of these variables as well as comprehend the cause and effect relationship among these concepts in order to determine how these variables are influenced by each other.; The target population was employees of 36 college athletic departments in Taiwan. Six universities and six technological institutions were randomly selected. The subjects consisted of non-management employees who were both full- and part-time staff. The sample size included four hundred thirty eight (N=439) individuals. A sample size of 439 was adequate for the structural equation modeling adopted in this study. The data collection procedure was conducted from September to the end of December in 2007.; There were four survey instruments used in this study in order to achieve the research objectives: Types of Leadership Practices Scale (TLPS) was developed by Posner and Kouzes (1988), Organizational Commitment Scale (OCS) was originally developed by Meyer and Allen (1997), Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS) was originally developed by Miller & Medalia (1955). Turnover Intention Scale (TIS) was developed by Moynihan, Boswell, and Boudreau (2000) as well as a demographic survey was completed by the subjects.; This study described the cause-effect relationships among the leadership behavior, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intention. It was necessary to conduct the structural equation modeling to explore the causal relationship among these variables. The data received from the employees within athletic department was analyzed by the statistical software package for the social science (SPSS 15.0) and Analysis of Moment Structure Version (AMOS 5.0). Descriptive statistics were used to calculate demographic variables and frequency distributions and measures of central tendency to understand the demographic characteristic of the sample.; The first research findings were concerned with the influence of leadership practice on organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. This study found that the relationship among leadership practice, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions to be significant and consistent. This study also examined the impact of job satisfaction on organizational commitment and turnover intentions positively or negatively. The existence of the relationships between these variables was confirmed by the findings of this study. Employees who reported high levels of satisfaction also reported high levels of organizational commitment, and employees who reported lower levels of perceived job satisfaction were transferred into a high level of turnover intention.