An investigation of the relationship between strategic leadership and organizational commitment in sports higher education institutions

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between strategic leadership and organizational commitment in sports higher education institutions. The study population consists of sports managers and academic staff of Sports Sciences Faculties and Physical Education and Sports Academies of 63 universities in Turkey. The study sample consists of sports managers and academic staff of 6 Sports Sciences Faculties and 19 Physical Education and Sports Academies of 25 universities in Turkey. The study was carried out using a relational screening model. Scales were used to collect data from managers and academic staff. Two scales, the validity and reliability of which have already been confirmed, were used in the study. These scales are "Strategic Leadership Scale" applied to managers and "Organizational Commitment Scale" applied to both managers and academic staff. Data were analyzed using descriptive analysis. The analysis of sports managers' mean subscale scores on strategic leadership indicates that they have the highest ethical leadership characteristics and lowest political leadership characteristics. The results also show that managers and academic staff have high levels of organizational commitment, and the levels of commitment they have from highest to lowest are emotional commitment, normative commitment and continuity commitment. There is a positive but not statistically significant relationship between managers' mean subscale scores on strategic leadership and academic staff's mean subscale scores on organizational commitment. According to these findings, managers' strategic leadership characteristics do not show parallelism with academic staff's organizational commitment characteristics. The results of the multiple regression analysis indicate that managers' political leadership characteristics have a statistically significant effect on academic staff's emotional commitment. The analysis of the canonical correlation between managers' mean subscale scores on strategic leadership and organizational commitment shows that there is a positive but low level (28.6%) relationship between their strategic leadership characteristics and organizational commitment levels. The analysis of the canonical correlation between mean organizational commitment subscale scores of managers and academic staff demonstrates that there is a statistically significant relationship between emotional commitment subscale of managers and organizational commitment subscales of academic staff. In conclusion, there is no statistically significant relationship between strategic leadership characteristics of sports managers and organizational commitment levels of sports managers and academic staff. However, ethical leadership subscale of sports managers has the highest effect on their organizational commitment levels while political leadership subscale of academic staff has the highest effect on their organizational commitment levels. On the other hand, there is a statistically significant relationship between emotional commitment subscale of managers and organizational commitment subscales of academic staff. In addition, emotional commitment subscale is highest for both variables.