Leadership Styles, Trust in Organizations, and the Mediating Role of Organizational Culture in Affective Occupational Commitment in Turkish Universities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. The topic is interesting and informative and is highly relevant to leadership debates in tourism research. The study offers potential contributions to higher education management and organizational behavior .However, there are some recommendations for improvement. I believe that after extensive review by the authors and potential modifications, this work can be resubmitted and published.

 

Introduction

 

• This section is over all well written. The authors used updated and relevant references and established a solid justification for the review. Nonetheless, the authors should clarify the knowledge gap and also detailing the implications of these gaps for both theory and practice.
• The authors could also discuss more about previous studies
• The authors should discuss how the study differs from previous reviews and conceptual studies.
• The authors should explain why they choose Turkish Universities and what is main problem related to the leadership styles

 

Conceptual Background and Hypotheses Need Clearer Integration

 

• Theoretical Contribution Requires Clarification
• The authors should summarize the “leadership” part
• Hypotheses appear incomplete or not directly derived from the literature summarized.
• For example, H3 assumes a moderating effect of organizational trust, but the theoretical rationale is not convincing or sufficiently developed.
• The model in Figure 1 does not reflect the research hypotheses, the authors should redesign this figure
• The authors should Clarify how each variable is theoretically expected to influence the others and ensure direct alignment between literature review , conceptual framework and hypotheses

 

 

 Methodology

• Sampling procedure: the authors should explain clear justifications for selecting the sample from one state university and one private university through convenience sampling. This could enhance the methodological credibility.
• The sample lacks representativeness across Turkish higher education institutions.

 

Results

 

• Mean age is reported as 42, yet age groups are described as 21–25 and 26–30, which is unrealistic for academic staff, e.g., 21–25 representing 61% seems unusual for academic staff
• In contrast to the theoretical framework, factor loadings reveal that supportive and participatory leadership collapsed into a single factor.
• The authors state that the hypothesized moderating effect of organizational trust was rejected, but no detailed explanation or statistical table is provided beyond a brief mention.
• The paper does not sufficiently interpret why the mediation is partial rather than full.
• The discussion overlooks whether the mediation effect aligns with previous research.

 

Discussion and Conclusions

• The discussion needs to be mood deep and the authors should cite enough references which align with the research findings

 

 

 

 

Implications

The authors should discuss more theoretical and practical implications which can be more useful with Turkish Universities.

 

References

The authors used some outdated references ; more recent studies (post-2020) on leadership and organizational culture should be added

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1. Since the theoretical links are explained in the literature section of the present study, we do not want to repeat the same explanations.
2. The associations between four key concepts are actually a frequently searched topic in many academic research. We aim to highlight these associations within a different framework by focusing on higher education institutions. There may not be new insights found, but the finding of the lack of moderator (trust), which is between leadership styles and organizational culture, is of interest
3. More explanation is added for clarifying the role of organizational trust in organizational functioning.
4. We thought that the seminal works of the pillars of these subjects should be shown, and these are what we examined. WE also think that there are a good number of recent sources.
5. Even though we stated that the respondents were selected from various universities in the abstract, we are awfully sorry to say that the respondents were selected not from just one state and one private university. In contrast, respondents were selected from three state and four private universities. We asked the HR departments of the universities to provide us with email accounts of their lecturers, as well as to find their email accounts through the websites of these universities.
6. You are absolutely right about the distribution of the mean ages of the respondents (352) but this is the situation; most probably, this is because respondents were selected from seven different universities, and four of them were private universities, which prefer hiring relatively young instructors.
7. Factor analysis for the leadership scale yielded two factors as participative and supportive. and there is no appearance of instrumental leadership, and it is simply the case for the present research. This issue is briefly discussed in the discussion section. We think that there is no theoretical explanation for the rejection of the moderation hypothesis; this is an empirical study, and this is the case. The low-level affective org. commitment (x = 3.11) was not good enough for its moderating effect between leadership styles and organizational culture. We wanted to focus on the level of affective organizational commitment of academics regarding the fact that if the academics love their occupation, they will do their best for their students. The findings show that poor level of affective commitment may also create an obstacle to the overall performance of universities. We think this is a critical issue especially for Turkey’s higher institutions.
8. We tried to explain why the mediation between leadership and affective commitment is partial.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

I have read your manuscript “Leadership Styles, Trust in Organizations, and the Mediating Role of Organizational Culture on Affective Occupational
Commitment in Turkish Universities.” I consider it well prepared. I only have a few suggestions for improvement.

• I recommend presenting the manuscript sequence as follows: 1) Introduction, 2) Theoretical Background, 3) Hypotheses Development, 4) Methodology, 5) Results, 6) Discussion, 7) Theoretical and Practical Implications, 8) Limitations and Future Research, and 9) Conclusion.
• In the hypothesis development section, explain each hypothesis separately
• The use of a convenience sample (Line 375) from only two universities (one state, one private) limits the generalizability of the findings. Clearly acknowledge this limitation in the discussion or conclusion section and advise caution when generalizing the results to the wider Turkish higher education context.
• Clarify and consistently use the correct terminology (Line 395): There is inconsistent use of the term "Affective Occupational Commitment." The title and some sections use "Occupational," while the scale (Meyer & Allen, 1993) and results sections (Table 3) use "Organizational Commitment."
• Mean values ​​(Line 433) for key variables (Organizational Trust, 2.96) are below the midpoint, indicating general neutrality or dissatisfaction. Expand this result in the discussion section.
• Factor analysis for the leadership scale yielded two factors (lines 443–445) (participative/supportive and instrumental) instead of the theoretical three. This discrepancy between theoretical models and empirical data needs to be clearly addressed and discussed. Why might the participatory and instrumental dimensions merge in this specific context?
• The research model in Figure 1 is not visible in the provided text (Lines 484-494)?
• The rejection of H3 (the moderating role of organizational trust) is a significant finding but is not sufficiently discussed. Expand the interpretation of this finding.

Author Response

REVIEWER 1 RESPONCE

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your careful consideration and thoughtful comments.

Best Regards,

Betül Ayça.

 

The manuscript sequence is made according to the most frequently used style, and by taking into account the organization of other researchers’ works that are published by MDPI.

Since the theoretical links are explained in the literature section of the present study, we do not want to repeat the same explanations.

Even though we stated that the respondents were selected from various universities in the abstract, we are awfully sorry to say that the respondents were selected not from just one state and one private university. In contrast, respondents were selected from three state and four private universities. We asked the HR departments of the universities to provide us with email accounts of their lecturers, as well as to find their email accounts through the websites of these universities.

The term Affective Occupational Commitment was used throughout the paper.

The low level of organizational trust is explained in the discussion section.

 

Factor analysis for the leadership scale yielded two factors as participative and supportive. and there is no appearance of instrumental leadership, and it is simply the case for the present research. This issue is also briefly discussed in the discussion section.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for inviting me to review this paper. Please see my comments below to help improve the manuscript:

1. Abstract: It would be better if the authors include the number of participants involved in the study.

2. References: In several sections, many references are outdated. I recommend updating the literature with more recent sources published between 2021 and 2025.

3. Contextual Background: It would strengthen the introduction if the authors could provide more context or a brief explanation of leadership, organizational culture, and their effects on employee attitudes in Turkey. What current issues or challenges make this study important in the Turkish context?

4. Figure 1: Please revise Figure 1 by adding the hypotheses (H1, H2, H3, H4) directly into the figure to improve clarity.

5. Methodology: The data analysis section is missing. The authors should clearly describe the analysis procedures, including the software used, the steps of analysis, and relevant statistical techniques.

6. Table Formatting: Table 12, as well as all other tables, should follow the MDPI template requirements for consistency and formatting.

7. Discussion, Conclusion, and Limitations: The discussion and conclusion sections should be presented separately to improve readability. Additionally, the manuscript lacks a limitations section, which is essential for acknowledging the study’s constraints.

Thank you.

Author Response

REVIEWER 2

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your careful consideration and thoughtful comments.

Best Regards,

Betül Ayça.

Seven issues were asked by the Reviewer 2:

1. The number of participants involved in the study was added in the abstract.
2. We thought that the seminal works of the pillars of these subjects should be shown, and these are what we examined. WE also think that there are a good number of recent sources.
3. Contextual background: We added some more information in the introduction section.
4. Figure 1. Hypotheses are shown in Figure 1 as you suggested.
5. Methodology: We added more information about data analysis methods.
6. Table Formatting: We made the necessary corrections as possible we can.
7. The limitations section was added.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper looks into a relevant topic in organizational behaviour within the context of Turkish universities. While the topic is conceptually important, the paper lacks methodological rigor and theoretical innovation. It mainly replicates existing associations without introducing new insights, and the empirical design has flaws that limit its contribution.

The theoretical discussion is overly descriptive and repetitive, summarizing theories rather than critically engaging with them. The conceptual linkages between variables are not clearly justified theoretically. It is unclear why organisational trust should moderate rather than mediate, or why affective occupational commitment (not organisational commitment) is chosen. Also, literature is too long and can be shortened, reads more like a textbook.

„Although 400 questionnaires were sent to instructors working in different universities, the number of usable questionnaires was 352, and this result indicates a response rate of 88%.“ – Explain better: how many filled out the questionnaires, and how many of them were usable in the end? How were instructors selected? Sampling procedure is unclear. Also, why these two universities in Turkey? Limits generalisability.

Please skip chapters with only one sentence. If you have a model, like figure 1, it should at least be briefly explained or it should be at the right spot. Please place RQ in your introduction, and hypotheses in your literature review for coherence.

„The mean age of the 420 instructors was 42, and the mean tenure was 16 years. While 61% of the participants were in the 21–25 age group, 31% were in the 26–30 age group and 5.6% were over 31 years of age.“ - This does not make sense.

Please revise all tables into same format.

The factor analysis results are questionable: First, leadership styles ended in two factors instead of three as theorized. Innovative and supportive cultures become one, indicating poor discriminant validity. The moderation test for trust was not properly reported as no interaction term is shown. Correlations among all variables are very high indicating multicollinearity or common method bias.

The rejection of the moderation hypothesis for trust is mentioned but not theoretically explained. The conclusion that “organizational culture mediates between leadership and commitment” is well-known in the literature; the study does not explain why this holds in Turkish academia.

The discussion section mostly repeats descriptive results rather than interpreting them. Also, no comparison with previous empirical findings only listing citations. The implications are rather generic, not based in the statistical or contextual findings, e.g., no distinction between private and public universities. The manuscript would also benefit from deeper contextual analysis of Turkish academic governance and leadership culture.

Author Response

REVIEWER 3

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your careful consideration and thoughtful comments.

Best Regards,

Betül Ayça.

The comments of Reviewer 3 were written in 8 separate paragraphs.

• The associations between four key concepts are actually a frequently searched topic in many academic research. We aim to highlight these associations within a different framework by focusing on higher education institutions. There may not be new insights found, but the finding of the lack of moderator (trust), which is between leadership styles and organizational culture, is of interest
• We can surely shorten the literature review; however, there are 4 key concepts, and leadership behaviors and organizational culture are known as highly complex subjects. This is why we would like to explain the most essential issues involved in these concepts. Otherwise, we are almost certain that another reviewer was telling us that the literature review must be expanded. From the theoretical perspective we think trust can moderate the link between leadership styles and organizational culture, having read the results of different research studies. We also test whether trust mediates this link, and the answer was negative.
• Even though we stated that the respondents were selected from various universities. In the abstract, we are awfully sorry to say that the respondents were selected not from just one state and one private university. In contrast, respondents were selected from three state and four private universities. We asked the HR departments of the universities to provide us with email accounts of their lecturers, as well as to find their email accounts through the websites of these universities. Then we sent them a Google Form repeatedly. We never thought that it would be useful to state that 378 of the respondents did not fill in the questionnaires, and as we wrote, the number of usable questionnaires was 352.
• The RQ is now added to the introduction section, and Figure 1 was redrawn.
• You are absolutely right about the distribution of the mean ages of the respondents (352, not 420), but this is the situation; most probably, this is because respondents were selected from 7 universities, and four of them were private universities, which prefer hiring relatively young instructors.
• The factor analysis of organizational culture (not leadership styles) resulted in two factors, as you underlined. The KMO values of the analysis, as well as factor loadings, are very high, and the cumulative variance explained is 65%. Moreover, Herman’s single-factor test confirms that there is no common bias. We would like to add that our initial expectation was that the primary factor was bureaucratic. This finding indicates that, regarding organizational culture, there is improvement in Turkish universities due to the blend of innovative and supportive culture. The VIF and tolerance tests also indicate that there is no multicollinearity between key variables.
• We think that there is no theoretical explanation for the rejection of the moderation hypothesis; this is an empirical study, and this is the case. The low-level affective organizational commitment (x = 3.11) was not good enough for its moderating effect between leadership styles and organizational culture. We wanted to focus on the level of affective organizational commitment of academics regarding the fact that if the academics love their occupation, they will do their best for their students. The findings show that poor affective commitment may create an obstacle to the overall performance of universities. We think this is a critical issue for Turkey’s higher institutions.
• We have added the importance of the academics’ low-level affective commitment, as you pointed out. We believe that the readers can easily understand the most important issues involved in the study as we underlined some primary points, which are certainly based on the statistical results of the study.

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for carefully implementing all the suggested revisions.

Author Response

Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

author has been revised manuscript well.

Author Response

Thank you for your constructive comments.

We think that the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods alla are correctly stated. We also clearly stated that the present study employed “hypothesis-testing) research design. This is added in the research design section.

We tried to do our best to describe, and contextualized theoretical background with respect to previous and present theoretical framework. Asa we also stated the number of research  studies which were conducted on similar concepts like our study, generally focused on the perceptions of students rather than the academics.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A few more comments:

The introduction and conceptual sections are quite long and repetitive. Leadership theories, organizational culture, and trust are each described at length, but the specific research gap and unique contribution remain vague.

For a journal like Sustainability, the connection to sustainability should be made more explicit.

The description of the Organizational Trust Inventory is inconsistent. In the methods you state that the Nyhan & Marlowe scale has two subdimensions. Yet Table 2 lists Organizational Trust Inventory with 4 items and a Cronbach’s alpha of .902. So, was one dimension dropped, which were actually used and why chosen? Similar to leadership styles data.

The descriptive statistics for age and tenure are not plausible and need to be corrected. You write that mean age is 42 years, and mean tenure 16 years. However, the age distribution is then reported as 61% aged 21–25, 31% aged 26–30, and 5.6% over 31. This seams incompatible.

Response rate is described as 88% (352 usable questionnaires), but the initial sampling frame size is not given, so please clarify how the response rate was calculated and rephrase (response rate is not the same as “usable responses”). And if the response rate is really 88% there is no “unwillingness of instructors” of responding as this is a very high number in social science research.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I really see inconsistency in the data and wonder if authors provide data.

Author Response

1. Since the theoretical links are explained in the literature section of the present study, we do not want to repeat the same explanations.
2. The associations between four key concepts are actually a frequently searched topic in many academic research. We aim to highlight these associations within a different framework by focusing on higher education institutions. There may not be new insights found, but the finding of the lack of moderator (trust), which is between leadership styles and organizational culture, is of interest
3. More explanation is added for clarifying the role of organizational trust in organizational functioning.
4. We thought that the seminal works of the pillars of these subjects should be shown, and these are what we examined. WE also think that there are a good number of recent sources.
5. Even though we stated that the respondents were selected from various universities in the abstract, we are awfully sorry to say that the respondents were selected not from just one state and one private university. In contrast, respondents were selected from three state and four private universities. We asked the HR departments of the universities to provide us with email accounts of their lecturers, as well as to find their email accounts through the websites of these universities.
6. You are absolutely right about the distribution of the mean ages of the respondents (352) but this is the situation; most probably, this is because respondents were selected from seven different universities, and four of them were private universities, which prefer hiring relatively young instructors.
7. Factor analysis for the leadership scale yielded two factors as participative and supportive. and there is no appearance of instrumental leadership, and it is simply the case for the present research. This issue is briefly discussed in the discussion section. We think that there is no theoretical explanation for the rejection of the moderation hypothesis; this is an empirical study, and this is the case. The low-level affective org. commitment (x = 3.11) was not good enough for its moderating effect between leadership styles and organizational culture. We wanted to focus on the level of affective organizational commitment of academics regarding the fact that if the academics love their occupation, they will do their best for their students. The findings show that poor level of affective commitment may also create an obstacle to the overall performance of universities. We think this is a critical issue especially for Turkey’s higher institutions.
8. We tried to explain why the mediation between leadership and affective commitment is partial.

BEST REGARDS.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

review ok