FEMALE LEADERSHIP, ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE, AND TEACHER JOB PERFORMANCE IN A CHINESE APPLIED UNIVERSITY: TESTING A MEDIATION MODEL

Abstract

Female leadership is expanding across Chinese higher education, yet how it translates into teacher job performance remains underspecified, particularly in applied, technology-oriented universities and in studies that explicitly test the intervening mechanism rather than a direct effect. Drawing on transformational leadership, organizational climate, and Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) theories, this study examines whether organizational climate mediates the relationship between female leadership and teacher job performance at a Chinese applied university. A cross-sectional survey was administered to 145 full-time teachers selected by proportional stratified sampling, using an 85-item Likert instrument with strong reliability (Cronbach’s α = .97) and sampling adequacy (KMO = .83). Data were analyzed using Pearson correlations and hierarchical multiple regression, with mediation assessed through Baron and Kenny’s procedure together with the indirect-effect estimate. Female leadership predicted teacher performance, but this effect became non-significant once organizational climate was entered, whereas climate remained a strong predictor, indicating full mediation. Organizational climate therefore appears to be the proximate channel through which female leadership relates to teacher performance, extending the leadership–climate–performance chain to a non-Western, applied-university context and underscoring climate as a high-leverage focus for institutional policy. Because the data are cross-sectional and self-reported from a single institution, causal and common-method inferences are limited; bootstrap mediation and longitudinal, multi-source designs are recommended for confirmation.