Leadership Orientation and Job Satisfaction in Pakistan: The Mediating Role of Engagement Conditions
Keywords:
Employee engagement, Job demands–resources model, Job satisfaction, Leadership orientation, Mediation analysis, Pakistan, Structural equation modellingAbstract
Leadership is consistently linked to job satisfaction, but the process through which this link operates is poorly specified, especially in collectivist, high power-distance labour markets. Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) framework and the job crafting literature, this study examines whether engagement conditions (the perceived availability of engagement-enabling job resources) mediate the association between employees’ own leadership orientation and their job satisfaction in Pakistani organisations. Survey data were collected from 250 employees of 30 Pakistani corporations between December 2020 and January 2021 (response rate 83.33%). Principal component analysis with Promax rotation reduced 22 Likert items to 12 (KMO = .829; Bartlett's (1954) χ² (66) = 1,491.01, p < .001). Composite reliability ranged from .788 to .830 and average variance extracted from .502 to .511; discriminant validity could not be established. A just-identified mediation model was estimated in closed form from the correlation matrix and standard deviations. Leadership orientation was positively associated with job satisfaction (total effect β = .513, p < .001) and with engagement conditions (β = .561, p < .001), and engagement conditions were associated with job satisfaction (β = .253, p < .001). The indirect effect was significant (ab = .142, Monte Carlo 95% CI [.070, .220]) and carried 27.6% of the total effect, while the direct effect remained significant (β = .371, p < .001), indicating complementary mediation. The resource environment is thus a genuine but partial route to satisfaction. Given the cross-sectional, single-source design and self-reported leadership measure, the findings are exploratory.
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