Empirical Investigation of Factors Influencing Faculty Followership's Perception of Institutional Leader in Malaysian Institutions of Higher Learning

This study aims at testing psychometric properties of the 32-item of Romance of Leadership Scale (RLS). The study is equally aims at investigating factors influencing faculty followership’s perception of institutional leader in selected Malaysian institutions of higher learning. Online survey questionnaires were conveniently sent to 2560 faculties of 16 public universities sampled, using guidelines of 95% confidence interval and margin of error at ± 02% to collect the data. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test factorial validity and psychometric properties of the three constructs underlie the faculty followership’s perception of institutional leader. It is anticipated that findings of the study will provide leaders of the institutions of higher learning with proper understanding of factors influencing faculty followership’s perceptions of institutional leaders, which is critical to organizational performance and faculty retention. Furthermore, it is expected that the findings will contribute to the initiatives of empirical studies on followership especially in higher education sector. The study as being the first of its kind in Malaysian context to empirically evaluate psychometric properties of the scales underlie faculty followership’s perception of institutional leader and investigate factors influencing faculty followership’s perception of institutional leader using well experienced participants rather than inexperience participants of the previous studies which sampled university students, high school and company employees would be a remarkable contribution to the followership literature.