Structural Relationships among SEM CEO's Positive Leadership, Members' Positive Life Positions, Learning Organization Activities, Job Engagement, and Organizational Performance

중소기업경영자의 긍정적 리더십, 구성원의 긍정적 삶의 태도, 학습조직활동, 직무열의, 조직성과 변인간의 구조적 관계

Purpose - In today's era of globalization, the competitive power of enterprises is growing fiercer, calling for organizations to be able to respond flexibly to survive and maintain predominance in competition. In turn, keen competition exists among enterprises for the systematic management of members' knowledge to secure predominance in such competition. Under such circumstances, SMEs must find and utilize positive causes for change that affect organizational performance. The objective of this study is to analyze the structural relationship between four factors known from prior research-a CEO's positive leadership, members' positive life positions, learning organization activities, and job engagement-and organizational performance. Research design, data, and methodology - To achieve this objective, this study established the following four research problems. First, do CEOs' positive leadership, members' positive life positions, learning organization activities, and job engagement affect organizational performance? Second, do CEOs' positive leadership, members' positive life positions, and learning organization activities affect job engagement? Third, do CEOs' positive leadership and members' positive life positions affect learning organization activities? Fourth, does CEOs' positive leadership affect members' positive life positions. Additionally, to achieve the objective of this study, the research model was selected on the basis of a documentary survey of 787 full-time employees at 100 SMEs, which was used to collect related data. Results - The following conclusions were drawn. First, a CEO's positive leadership directly affects members' positive life positions, learning organization activities, and job engagement. Second, positive leadership only indirectly affects organizational performance. That is, positive leadership has an indirect effect on organizational performance given the parameters of members' positive life positions, learning organization activities, and job engagement. Third, members' positive life positions directly affect learning organization activities and job engagement, but indirectly affect organizational performance with learning organization activities and job engagement as parameters. Fourth, learning organization activities directly affect job engagement and organizational performance. Additionally, learning organization activities indirectly affect organizational performance with job engagement as a parameter. Fifth, job engagement directly affects organizational performance. Conclusions - A CEO's positive leadership and members' positive life positions do not directly affect organizational performance but have a positive effect through learning organization activities and job engagement. In particular, CEOs' positive leadership was proven to be the major factor to affect members' positive life positions, learning organization attitudes, and job engagement, and learning organization activities and job engagement were found to be major factors that directly affect organizational performance. Considering these conclusions, the direct effect of a CEO's positive leadership on organizational performance is not statistically significant but seems to affect members' positive life positions, learning organization activities, and job engagement, which ultimately affects organizational performance. In addition, CEOs' positive leadership is an important factor that enhances the factors with the strongest effect on organizational performance-activities of learning organizations and job engagement.