The Mediating Influence of Leadership Behaviour on the Relationship between Organizational Health and Work Engagement

Efficient leadership and a healthy teaching environment are the two factors that determine how school teachers conduct themselves professionally. Work engagement not only reflects the teachers’ performance but also implies the performance of the pupils and the school and it depends on how congenial their working conditions are. The present study intended to assess the extent to which the leadership behaviour of principals mediated the effect of organizational health on the work engagement of 516 secondary school teachers working in Bengaluru, India. The organizational health inventory was employed to quantify the organizational health of schools at institutional, managerial and technical levels, the Utrecht tool was used to measure teachers’ work engagement through their vigor, dedication and absorption, and the leadership behaviour of principals was measured in terms of consideration and initiating behaviour. The findings implied a positive relationship between organizational health and teachers’ work engagement. Further, while leadership behaviour indeed mediated the impact of organizational health on work engagement, the mediating effect was only partial. The results imply that the teachers’ work engagement cannot be entirely attributed to the school management and working conditions, which implies scope for further research on the factors affecting work engagement among the teachers.