Multivariate modeling of organizational dynamics and faculty well-being in higher education

Alave Mamani C.G.; Tocto-Cano E.; Gonzales Medina R.I.; López-Gonzales J.L.; Turpo-Chaparro J.E. · BMC Psychology (2026) · DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05450-0

Resumen

Background: Leadership styles are increasingly recognised as strategic organizational resources for faculty well-being, yet the evidence remains fragmented: prior studies have examined leadership, workplace harassment—systematic, recurrent negative acts that constrain the target’s capacity for self-defence—and psychological resources in isolation, and rarely within a single explanatory model. Whether these processes operate equivalently for male and female faculty has been largely untested, despite its direct relevance for equitable university management. Aim: To test an integrated structural model relating transformational and servant leadership to workplace harassment, teacher self-efficacy, and life satisfaction among Peruvian university teachers; to formally test the mediating role of self-efficacy against directly estimated residual effects; and to examine whether the structural relations differ by gender. Design: A quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional study with explanatory scope. Participants: 506 university teachers from Peru (49.6% men, 50.4% women; 61.66% from public institutions). Methods: Structural Equation Modelling with robust WLSMV estimation on ordinal indicators, including directly estimated residual paths from both leadership styles to life satisfaction. Indirect effects were evaluated with the product-of-coefficients method and bootstrap bias-corrected accelerated confidence intervals (B=5000; ML sensitivity analysis). Measurement invariance across gender was tested with a configural–metric–scalar (threshold) sequence under WLSMV, and structural gender differences were assessed with a formal likelihood-ratio comparison of free versus constrained multigroup models, followed by Wald tests of path differences. Robustness to age, university type, and region was verified through a covariate-adjusted sensitivity model. Results: Both transformational (β=−0.123, p0.01) and servant (β=−0.186, p0.001) leadership were negatively associated with workplace harassment. Servant leadership showed the strongest effect on self-efficacy (β=0.505, p0.001), which in turn predicted life satisfaction (β=0.429, p0.001; R2=0.393). Servant leadership exhibited complementary partial mediation: both its indirect effect via self-efficacy (βstd=0.217, BCa CI [0.146,0.354]) and its direct residual effect (β=0.251, BCa CI [0.198,0.597]) were significant. Transformational leadership showed a small indirect-only effect (βstd=0.033, BCa CI [0.003,0.101]) with a non-significant direct path. Serial paths through harassment were not significant. Measurement invariance across gender was supported (ΔCFI ≤0.003 at every step), licensing structural comparison; full structural equivalence was rejected (Δχ2(8)=17.86, p=0.022), with Wald tests localising the differences exclusively to the transformational-leadership paths: its protective effect against harassment operated among women (β=−0.238, p0.001) but not men (β=−0.022, n.s.), whereas its effect on self-efficacy operated among men (β=0.157, p0.05) but not women (β=−0.024, n.s.). All conclusions were robust to age, university type, and region (all |Δβ|≤0.012). Conclusion: Servant leadership functions as a gender-equivalent organisational resource for faculty well-being, whereas transformational leadership operates through gender-specific pathways—protecting women against workplace harassment and strengthening men’s efficacy beliefs. These findings provide differentiated, data-driven guidance for university management aligned with Sustainable Development Goals 5 (gender equality) and 16 (just institutions), indicating that leadership development must be gender-responsive rather than uniform. © The Author(s) 2026.

Instituciones: Universidad Católica de Santa María; Universidad Peruana Unión