The Mediating Effect of Leaders’ Idealized Influence on the Relationship between Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence and Intention to Perform among Academics in Malaysian Research Universities: Gender as a Moderator

Abstract

Academic leaders have a significant task to carry out in higher educational institutions, and for the improvement of academic leaders' responsiveness regarding their emotional intelligence and their influence is essential. This research is intended to examine the academic leaders' emotional intelligence and idealized influence towards subordinates intention to perform and how it moderated by academic leaders' gender. Drawing from attribution theory and social exchange theory, the research hypothesized that leaders' emotional intelligence and subordinate intention to perform will be mediated by leaders' idealized influence. 386 questionnaires samples from five Malaysian public research universities was obtained with partial least squares structural equation modeling used in analyzing the measurements. The findings revealed that academic leaders' emotional intelligence-subordinates intention to perform relationship mediated via academic leaders' idealized influence. In addition, the mediation analysis revealed that academic leaders' idealized influence mediated the leaders' emotional intelligence-subordinates intention to perform when it was modeled with academic leaders' gender as moderated in the structure model.

The Mediating Effect of Leaders’ Idealised Influence on the Relationship Between Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence and Job Performance Among Academics in Malaysian Public Research Universities

“…This is further supported by Koveshnikov and Ehrnrooth, (2018) in the Korean, Russia and Finland contexts, as idealised influence have different effects on followers. Therefore, leaders' idealised influence in Malaysian public research universities does not influence their job performance, even though leaders' idealised influence does predict academics' intentions to perform (Raman et al, 2020). This relationship occurred because the subordinates' perceptions towards their leaders are dominated by the norms of respect and autonomy and undoubtedly, leadership is a social practice framed by social norms values (Dickson et al, 2003).…”

“…The present research was interested in examining idealised influence, therefore, Edwards et al's (2010) 19 items were adapted. Meanwhile, the job performance measurement scale was adapted from Raman et al (2020). It had three items that were rated with response categories of above expectation, meet expectation and below expectation.…”

“…The situation of Malaysian research universities does not mirror academics' performance, as the yields referenced do not correspond with the rankings. Truth be told, query about on the issues and magnitudes of higher education in Malaysia remains vague (Raman et al, 2020;Ghasemy et al, 2018& Ibrahim et al, 2018. Therefore, as the gap between ranking and outcomes in studies into higher education remains, this study aims to determine methods to improve ranking and performance as a whole, ideally through leadership.…”

Role of Emotional Intelligence in Managing Organizational Culture During Covid-19 – A Cross-Sectional Study

“…The common method bias in this study reached 28.849 per cent of the total variance, which is less than the recommended cut-off of 50 per cent. [42], [43].…”