AI Insight
This study of 424 Chinese university teachers found that department-based need-supportive leadership was positively associated with teachers' affective job satisfaction. The relationship was partially explained through three pathways: directly through basic psychological need satisfaction (autonomy, competence, relatedness), through work motivation, and through a combined serial pathway where need satisfaction leads to motivation which then affects job satisfaction. The mediation pathways accounted for approximately 44% of the total effect, while direct effects of leadership on satisfaction remained significant.
Why it matters
The findings suggest that university department leaders who support teachers' psychological needs may enhance job satisfaction both directly and by fostering need fulfillment and intrinsic motivation. This has practical implications for leadership training and organizational practices in higher education settings, particularly in understanding how leadership styles influence faculty well-being and retention.
BackgroundGuided by self-determination theory (SDT), we examined whether department-based need-supportive leadership, conceptualized as an SDT-based leadership behavior construct, is associated with affective job satisfaction among Chinese university teachers and whether work-related basic psychological need satisfaction and work motivation statistically account for this association through independent and serial indirect pathways.MethodsWe surveyed in-service Chinese university teachers (N = 424). After controlling for gender, age, and academic rank, we tested a regression-based serial mediation model (PROCESS Model 6; 5,000 percentile bootstrap samples).ResultsDepartment-based need-supportive leadership was positively associated with affective job satisfaction (β_total = 0.334, p < 0.001; total effect B = 0.4938, 95% CI [0.3625, 0.6252]). The direct effect remained significant after including work-related basic psychological need satisfaction and work motivation (β = 0.187, p < 0.001; c′ = 0.2758, 95% CI [0.1491, 0.4026]). The total indirect effect was 0.2180 (95% CI [0.1528, 0.2900]; 44.15%), with significant specific indirect effects via work-related basic psychological need satisfaction (B = 0.0583, 95% CI [0.0107, 0.1093]; 11.81%), via work motivation (B = 0.0856, 95% CI [0.0309, 0.1478]; 17.33%), and via the serial pathway through work-related basic psychological need satisfaction and work motivation (B = 0.0741, 95% CI [0.0492, 0.1053]; 15.01%).ConclusionDepartment-based need-supportive leadership showed a positive association with teachers’ affective job satisfaction that was partially accounted for by indirect effect estimates via work-related basic psychological need satisfaction and work motivation. Given the cross-sectional, self-report design, findings should be interpreted as associations and indirect effect estimates rather than evidence of temporal ordering or causal mechanisms.