The effect of intelligent leadership on organizational loyalty; the mediation role ‎of knowledge-creation

Undoubtedly, one of the crucial factors in achieving the goals of education is loyal and committed human resources. In this regard, one of the factors that make the members of the organization dedicate themselves to the organization and remain loyal is the leadership style of the managers. Among the leadership styles, the intelligent leadership style has a great influence on teachers' organizational loyalty. This style provides the basis for cooperation, consultation and modeling among teachers and causes them to have a stronger bond with the organization. In this study, the mediating role of organizational knowledge-creation in the relationship between intelligent leadership and organizational loyalty of teachers in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province was investigated.

The method was descriptive, a type of correlation study and especially a structural equation modeling. The statistical population included all teachers of the second grade of high schools in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province including a total number of  2687, who were selected as a sample via proportional stratified random sampling based on the Cochran formula. To collect data, the researcher-made intelligent leadership questionnaires were used based on Sidanmanlaka's model (2008) including four dimensions of spiritual, emotional, rational and collective leadership as in 22 items on a five-point Likert scale. The researcher-made questionnaire of organizational knowledge-creation was designed based on the model of Nonoka and Takeuchi (2006) enjoying four dimensions of socialization, internalization, externalization, and combination as in 15 items on a five-point Likert scale. Moreover, the organizational loyalty questionnaire of Wells et al. (2011), having two dimensions of attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty including 7 items with a five-point Likert scale, was used. Cronbach's alpha tests and second-order exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to determine the reliability and validity of the questionnaires. Cronbach's alpha of intelligent leadership (95%), organizational knowledge-creation with alpha (90%) and organizational loyalty (94%) were obtained and, the statistical methods used in this research included descriptive and inferential statistics as well as structural equation modeling by the help of SPSS v 21, AMOS v 26 software.

The correlation coefficients between intelligent leadership and organizational loyalty (45%), intelligent leadership and organizational knowledge-creation (48%), and knowledge-creation and organizational loyalty (86%) were obtained. There was a positive and significant relationship between intelligent leadership, organizational loyalty and organizational knowledge-creation at the level of 0.001. Moreover, the effect of smart leadership on teachers' organizational loyalty through organizational knowledge-creation with total effect and coefficient of (45%) with indirect effect and coefficient of (39%) was significant at p=0.001.

The results indicated that as the intelligent leadership increases, organizational loyalty increases. In addition, the mediating effect of organizational knowledge-creation causes an increase in organizational loyalty. Considering the effect of intelligent leadership on organizational loyalty through the mediation of organizational knowledge-creation in teachers, it is recommended that the authorities of education organization in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province hold training workshops for teachers to familiarize them with four dimensions of rational, emotional, spiritual and collective leadership and, provide conditions for group and collaborative decision-making by establishing and enhancing interaction and cooperation among teachers.