Organisational learning: antecedent of transformational and complexity leadership with mediation of organisational culture

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the practice of organisational learning and its relationship with two leadership approaches (transformational and complexity leaderships) which are the predictor variables, and the mediation effect of organisational culture. The comprehensive literature review resulted in seven hypotheses in which four of them deal with the direct effect of the two leadership approaches on organisational learning and organisational culture. The other hypotheses show the mediation effect of OC and the direct impact of OC on OL. The context of the study is the Ethiopian hotel sector in which international hotel chains are taken as specific cases. Moreover, the problems under investigation focus on explaining how the learning practice of the case organizations is shaped and affected by the above-mentioned leadership approaches and the culture established in the organizations. The study was designed as an explanatory sequential mixed method study (QUAN→Qual). The researcher used stratified and simple random sampling techniques for the quantitative study and purposive sampling technique for the qualitative study to sample the target population size of 1100. In addition, “a priori sample size for SEM” method for the quantitative study and saturation method for qualitative study were used to determine the sample size. In light of the quantitative data, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was run to validate the model and a structural model was constructed to test hypotheses. The model summaries of the CFA show that almost all fit indices satisfy the cut-off values and the results of the structural equation model (SEM) indicated that all seven hypotheses are positive and significant. The qualitative data were collected using interview and the weaving method was applied in which the results of the quantitative and the findings of qualitative studies were presented together using a thematic approach. The findings indicate that the various features of TL and CL have a minimal impact in promoting OL in the case organizations. The conceptual, empirical and contextual contributions of the study are also discussed. The major contributions of the study include a knowledge contribution to the current literature of complexity leadership approach and investigating the multiple level phenomena of organisational learning. Finally, limitations of the study are discussed and recommendations for further studies are proposed.