Leadership Communication, School Culture, and Teachers’ Organizational Commitment in Selected Islamic Secondary Schools

Educational institutions increasingly face challenges in sustaining teachers’ organizational commitment amid shifting professional expectations and institutional pressures, particularly within private and faith-based schooling contexts. Despite extensive research, prior studies tend to examine leadership, work environment, and school culture in isolation, with limited empirical integration of these variables within a unified structural model that also tests the mediating role of work motivation. Addressing this gap, the present study investigates the direct and indirect relationships among leadership style, work environment, school culture, work motivation, and teachers’ organizational commitment in Muhammadiyah senior high schools. Employing a quantitative explanatory design, data were collected from 72 teachers and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling with the Partial Least Squares approach. The results indicate that leadership style and work environment significantly and positively influence organizational commitment, while school culture does not demonstrate a significant effect. In contrast, work environment and school culture significantly enhance work motivation, whereas leadership style shows no meaningful impact. Importantly, work motivation neither affects organizational commitment nor mediates the relationships between organizational factors and commitment. These findings reveal a structural distinction between professional motivation and institutional attachment, suggesting that commitment is shaped more directly by relational and environmental organizational experiences than by motivational mechanisms. The study offers theoretical refinement by challenging the assumed mediating role of motivation and contributes practical insights for educational leadership by emphasizing the importance of strengthening workplace conditions and participatory leadership to sustain teacher commitment in broader educational systems.