Beyond the Generational Myth: Democratic Leadership, Dedication, and Commitment as the Predictors of Organizational Effectiveness in a Multigenerational Public Workforce
2026· International journal of research and innovation in social science· Vol 10, pp. 6253-6261· 0 citations
Abstract
A generational-management industry has grown around the premise that Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z must be led differently because cohort membership shapes workplace outcomes. This study subjected that premise to a direct predictive test in one of the most generationally lopsided workforces in the Philippine public sector. Drawing on data from 350 employees of the Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office 10 (DSWD-10), Northern Mindanao, selected through stratified random sampling, multiple linear regression analysis was conducted with four leadership styles (transformational, transactional, servant, and democratic), four employee engagement dimensions (vigor, dedication, absorption, and commitment), and dummy-coded generational cohorts (with Generation Z/Others as reference) simultaneously entered as predictors of composite organizational effectiveness. Findings showed that the model was highly significant, explaining more than three-fourths of the variance in organizational effectiveness, yet only three predictors carried significant unique effects: commitment to organizational goals, dedication, and democratic leadership. Transformational, transactional, and servant leadership lost their individual significance to multicollinearity, their effects absorbed by democratic leadership given the very strong inter-correlations among the styles. Most strikingly, every generational cohort dummy was non-significant despite Millennials and Generation Z composing the overwhelming majority of the workforce: knowing an employee’s generation adds nothing to the prediction of organizational effectiveness once leadership and engagement are accounted for. The findings warrant a partial rejection of the null hypothesis and a practical reorientation for public institutions: invest in participatory leadership and in the dedication and commitment of employees, and retire cohort-based programming in favor of person-centered management.
Public welfare institutions in the Philippines now operate with one of the youngest and most generationally diverse workforces in government, yet baseline evidence describing how these employees perceive their leaders, experience their work, and assess their organization remains scarce. This study provided a descriptive profile of leadership styles, generational cohort composition, employee engagement, and organizational effectiveness among employees of the Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office 10 (DSWD-10), Northern Mindanao, Philippines. Using a descriptive quantitative design, data were gathered from 350 employees selected through stratified random sampling and analyzed using frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations. Findings revealed a predominantly young workforce, with Millennials and Generation Z jointly constituting the overwhelming majority of employees while Baby Boomers have nearly exited the agency. All four leadership styles were rated High, with transformational leadership obtaining the highest dimensional mean and the four styles tightly clustered, indicating a versatile, multi-style supervisory repertoire. Employee engagement was High overall, with dedication uniquely rated Very High and the perceived importance of one’s work emerging as the strongest single element of the engagement profile. Organizational effectiveness was likewise High across job satisfaction, workplace productivity, and service quality, with team collaboration the only sub-dimension rated Very High; however, recognition, compensation and benefits, and end-of-day energy emerged as the lowest-rated areas, a pattern consistent with the predominantly non-regular employment arrangements covering most respondents. The study concludes that DSWD-10 possesses a mission-driven, high-performing, and highly dedicated workforce whose well-being infrastructure has not kept pace with its performance, and offers an evidence-based workforce profile that public welfare agencies can use for leadership development, engagement programming, and human resource policy; the inferential questions arising from this profile are examined in separate companion papers.
Edgar G. Requilme, Nenita I. Prado· International journal of res...· 0 citations
How do leadership and employee engagement jointly produce organizational effectiveness: independently, through a mediated chain, or as correlated co-equal forces? Organizational research has largely settled into the mediation orthodoxy, in which leadership drives outcomes through engagement, yet rival structural configurations are rarely tested against one another, and almost never in developing-country public welfare institutions. This study subjected three competing structural models to formal comparison using structural equation modeling with data from 350 employees of the Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office 10 (DSWD-10), Northern Mindanao, Philippines, selected through stratified random sampling. Leadership Style (transformational, transactional, servant, and democratic) and Employee Engagement (vigor, dedication, absorption, and commitment) were modeled as latent exogenous constructs, Organizational Effectiveness (job satisfaction, workplace productivity, and service quality) as the latent outcome, and generational cohort dummies as contextual variables. Findings showed that the Independence Model, which fixes the leadership-engagement covariance at zero, was rejected on fit; the Full Mediation Model achieved acceptable but marginal fit; and the Covariance Model demonstrated the best fit across all indices, with both structural paths significant. Employee Engagement emerged as the stronger structural driver of organizational effectiveness, Leadership Style as the second, and the two constructs covaried substantially, while all generational cohort paths were non-significant. The null hypothesis of no best-fitting structural model was rejected, and the validated Covariance Model is advanced as the Requilme Multigenerational Workforce Effectiveness (RMWE) Model, a four-tier framework positioning integrative leadership and mission-driven engagement as mutually reinforcing dual engines of effectiveness, with implementation guidelines aligned to Philippine civil service systems. The findings challenge the assumption that engagement is merely a conduit for leadership effects and offer public institutions an evidence-based, generationally inclusive framework for organizational development.
Edgar G. Requilme, Nenita I. Prado· International journal of res...· 0 citations
Whether the leadership employees experience and the engagement they bring to their work are significantly associated with organizational outcomes remains an empirical question that Philippine public-sector research has largely left unanswered. This study examined the relationship between organizational effectiveness and the sub-variables of leadership styles and employee engagement among employees of the Department of Social Welfare and Development Field Office 10 (DSWD-10), Northern Mindanao, Philippines. Employing a quantitative correlational design, data were collected from 350 employees selected through stratified random sampling and analyzed using Pearson product-moment correlation. Four leadership styles (transformational, transactional, servant, and democratic) and four engagement dimensions (vigor, dedication, absorption, and commitment) were correlated with three organizational effectiveness outcomes: job satisfaction, workplace productivity, and service quality. Findings showed that all twenty-four correlations were positive and statistically significant, leading to the rejection of the null hypothesis for every pairing. Two distinct relational patterns emerged. Leadership styles correlated most strongly with job satisfaction, led by servant and democratic leadership, and only moderately with workplace productivity and service quality, where democratic leadership was consistently the strongest style. Employee engagement, by contrast, associated robustly with all three outcomes, with commitment the strongest correlate of job satisfaction and dedication the strongest correlate of both workplace productivity and service quality. The study concludes that leadership relates most proximally to how employees experience their work, while engagement is most closely associated with what employees produce and deliver. The findings affirm the Full Range Leadership Theory, Servant and Democratic Leadership perspectives, and the Job Demands-Resources Model, and identify commitment- and dedication-building as high-leverage points for public welfare institutions.
Edgar G. Requilme, Nenita I. Prado· International journal of res...· 0 citations
This study investigates the effects of three strategic leadership styles such as coaching leadership, shared leadership, and ambidextrous leadership on employee commitment and employee performance in Malaysian organizations, with generational cohort (Generation X, Generation Y, and Generation Z) examined as a moderating variable. As Malaysian workplaces become increasingly multigenerational, differences in values and expectations may influence how employees respond to leadership behaviours. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted among 150 employees across multiple industries in Malaysia. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed due to the exploratory nature of the study and the complexity of the proposed moderation model. The findings indicate low indicator reliability, largely attributable to homogeneous response patterns that may reflect collectivist cultural norms within Malaysian organisations. The structural model revealed no statistically significant direct effects between the examined leadership styles and employee commitment or performance. Furthermore, generational cohort did not significantly moderate the relationships under investigation. These results suggest that leadership effects in the Malaysian context may operate indirectly through relational mechanisms such as trust, communication quality, and team climate rather than through direct behavioural pathways. The study underscores the importance of culturally adaptive measurement instruments and highlights the need for future research incorporating mediating variables, larger samples, and multi-group analytical approaches.
Ah Huai Ah Chan, Prashanth Beleya, Monica Picca et al.· Wseas Transactions on Busine...· 0 citations
The dynamics of workplaces around the world are undergoing a fundamental change due to the growing number of Millennials and Generation Z in the labour market (Twenge, 2010). Traditionally oriented organizational norms, which pre-empt hierarchy, job security, and long- term loyalty, are increasingly called into question by new value orientations focusing on flexibility, purpose, collaboration and digital integration. The given paper will explore how much Millennials and Generation Z are transforming the behaviour of the modern workplace, affecting leadership styles, patterns of communication, work values as well as organisational culture (Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010). Based on the generational cohort theory, social exchange theory, and modern empirical literature, the given work synthesises the obtained studies and outlines fundamental behavioural changes and the emergent trends in the modern workplaces with the impact of generational diversity (Parry, 2011). It takes a conceptual and reviewbased approach to analyse critically scholarly contributions that have been released within the last two decades, thus shedding light on the importance of technological progress, a changing psychological contract, and a changing employee expectation (Macky et al., 2008). According to the findings, Millennials and Generation Z are not just adjusting to organisational systems but transforming them in an active manner and organisations have to reimagine how they handle human resource practices, leadership, and how they engage workers (Schullery, 2013). This way, the research contributes to the developing literature in generational workforce dynamics and provides practical information to organizations that aim to align old structures with the requirements of modern workforce (Lyons & Kuron, 2014).
The technological, social, and organizational transformations of recent decades have redefined labor relations and challenged traditional management models. In this context, the inclusion of Generation Z in the labor market has sparked growing academic and organizational interest due to its unique characteristics, values, and expectations. This article aims to analyze how the contemporary labor market has been configured in relation to Generation Z, highlighting the impacts of its presence on management practices, leadership, and talent retention. This is a qualitative research study, developed through a literature review, based on authors who discuss generations, organizational behavior, and people management. The results indicate that the labor market is in a process of transition, pressured to incorporate greater flexibility, purpose, and innovation to meet the demands of this generation, even though structural resistance persists. It is concluded that understanding Generation Z not only contributes to the improvement of current organizational practices but also constitutes a strategic element for the competitiveness and sustainability of organizations in the long term.
Talita Francisco Santos, Adriana Cristina Silva· Revista de Estudos Interdisc...· 0 citations
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