Department-based need-supportive leadership and affective job satisfaction among Chinese university teachers: a cross-sectional serial mediation analysis of work-related basic psychological need satisfaction and work motivation

BackgroundGuided by self-determination theory (SDT), we examined whether department-based need-supportive leadership, conceptualized as an SDT-based leadership behavior construct, is associated with affective job satisfaction among Chinese university teachers and whether work-related basic psychological need satisfaction and work motivation statistically account for this association through independent and serial indirect pathways.MethodsWe surveyed in-service Chinese university teachers (N = 424). After controlling for gender, age, and academic rank, we tested a regression-based serial mediation model (PROCESS Model 6; 5,000 percentile bootstrap samples).ResultsDepartment-based need-supportive leadership was positively associated with affective job satisfaction (β_total = 0.334, p < 0.001; total effect B = 0.4938, 95% CI [0.3625, 0.6252]). The direct effect remained significant after including work-related basic psychological need satisfaction and work motivation (β = 0.187, p < 0.001; c′ = 0.2758, 95% CI [0.1491, 0.4026]). The total indirect effect was 0.2180 (95% CI [0.1528, 0.2900]; 44.15%), with significant specific indirect effects via work-related basic psychological need satisfaction (B = 0.0583, 95% CI [0.0107, 0.1093]; 11.81%), via work motivation (B = 0.0856, 95% CI [0.0309, 0.1478]; 17.33%), and via the serial pathway through work-related basic psychological need satisfaction and work motivation (B = 0.0741, 95% CI [0.0492, 0.1053]; 15.01%).ConclusionDepartment-based need-supportive leadership showed a positive association with teachers’ affective job satisfaction that was partially accounted for by indirect effect estimates via work-related basic psychological need satisfaction and work motivation. Given the cross-sectional, self-report design, findings should be interpreted as associations and indirect effect estimates rather than evidence of temporal ordering or causal mechanisms.