Dual Engines of Public Welfare Effectiveness: Testing Competing Structural Models and Advancing the Requilme Multigenerational Workforce Effectiveness Model

Abstract

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.