Transformational leadership, knowledge-based work passion and organizational citizenship behavior: A survey dataset from public university

Background and objectives: the leadership styles in higher education, especiallypublic universities, face enormous challenges in handling global situations, i.e., thecovid-19 pandemic. the current dataset of this study aims to verify how transformationalleadership is more effective in influencing organizational citizenship behavior throughknowledge-based work passion. individuals with a high level of knowledge-based workpassion are able to feel happiness, pride, and pleasure, and are totally involved andmake sense of their work. in addition, they also show highly positive emotions towardthe people around them and are happy to assist them.methods: structural equation modeling (sem) with amos 21.0 software is used toanalyze the data collected from 221 professional lecturers utilizing a purposive samplingtechnique from a total of 1,242 lecturers in southeast sulawesi, indonesia publicuniversities. the loading values of the survey instrument, composite reliability, andaverage variance extracted are tested to justify reliability and convergent validity for themeasurement model in this study.findings: the results show that transformational leadership positively and significantlyaffects knowledge-based work passion (β = 0.568, c.r. = 6.536; ρ < 0.001) but notorganizational citizenship behavior (β = 0.061, c.r. = 0.608; ρ > 0.001). in addition,knowledge-based work passion directly has a positive and significant effect onorganizational citizenship behavior (β = 0.696, c.r. = 3.571; ρ > 0.001). further, themechanism effect of transformational leadership on organizational citizenship behaviorthrough knowledge-based work passion was tested. the result indicates the mediatingrole of knowledge-based work passion (β = 0.395, ρ > 0.001) in the relationship betweentransformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior.conclusion: this study contributes significantly to organizational managementpractices, especially in the field of education, by identifying how transformationalleadership improves organizational citizenship behavior through knowledge-basedwork passion. when individuals recognize their leaders as transformational, they aremore likely to behave and engage in volunteering for extra tasks, having a positive workenvironment, feeling more connected to the organization and being flexible in theirduties.