Abstract

Leadership issues in the world of education are becoming imperative after the COVID-19 pandemic as leaders of educational institutions need to make changes and adapt in order to survive. This study examines the relationship between servant leadership, organizational commitment, and the task performance of Catholic higher school lecturers. It is based on the hypothesis that servant leadership exerts a direct positive effect on organizational commitment and task performance; organizational commitment has a direct positive effect on task performance. Furthermore, servant leadership poses an indirect positive effect on task performance mediated by organizational commitment. The prediction is tested using data from a sample of 108 lecturers at Catholic universities in Indonesia. The adopted technical statistical analysis is factor analysis with Smart-PLS software. The result shows that there is a significant positive direct effect of servant leadership on organizational commitment and a significant positive effect of organizational commitment on task performance. In addition, servant leadership does not directly affect task performance. Furthermore, servant leadership has an indirect positive effect on task performance mediated by organizational commitment. The servant leadership variable contributes significantly to organizational commitment in four ways: giving priority to followers and helping followers grow and succeed; behaving ethically and empowering lecturers. The organizational commitment variable contributes significantly to task performance in two ways: continuance commitment and normative commitment.