Transformational leadership, work motivation, and teacher performance: Evidence from the Sula Islands, Indonesia

Fitra Nita Nur (), Edi Sugiono () and Hasanudin Hasanudin ()
Additional contact information
Fitra Nita Nur: Universitas Nasional Jakarta
Edi Sugiono: Universitas Nasional Jakarta
Hasanudin Hasanudin: Universitas Nasional Jakarta

Journal of Economics and Business Letters, 2026, vol. 6, issue 4, 23-36

Abstract: This study aims to examine the effect of school principal transformational leadership and work motivation on teacher performance at SMA Negeri 1 Kepulauan Sula, a remote insular school context that remains underexplored in Indonesian educational leadership research. Using an explanatory research approach, data were collected from 48 teachers through a saturated sampling technique and a 1–5 Likert-scale questionnaire, then analyzed with SmartPLS 4. Results show that transformational leadership significantly affects teacher performance (β = 0.502) and work motivation (β = 0.886), while work motivation significantly affects teacher performance (β = 0.486), jointly explaining 92.2% of its variance. This topic was chosen because senior high schools in geographically isolated regions face distinct leadership and motivational challenges rarely addressed in prior studies. The novelty lies in testing this model within a remote insular context to help reconcile inconsistent prior findings. It is recommended that principals strengthen transformational leadership and design context-specific strategies to sustain teacher motivation. Keywords: transformational leadership; work motivation; teacher performance; school principal.

Keywords: Transformational Leadership; Work Motivation; Teacher Performance; School Principal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journal.privietlab.org/download.php?id=12576 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:prv:jeblpv:1999

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://journal.priv ... BL/article/view/1999

DOI: 10.55942/jebl.v6i4.1999

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economics and Business Letters from Privietlab Research Center
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mochammad Fahlevi ().