Working together: Factors affecting the relationship between leadership and job satisfaction in Iranian HR departments

Implementation of human resource management (HRM) practices in Iran has been patchy and unenthusiastic despite them having been found to be beneficial in Western countries. To investigate this problem, survey data were gathered from 63 private sector organizations in Iran, producing 325 usable responses, and were analysed using structural equation modelling. Our findings unexpectedly show that transactional leadership had a similar impact on balanced organizational culture to transformational leadership. Also, no relationship was found between balanced organizational culture and team working, or between team working and job satisfaction, which contradicts previous research. We argue that, in HR departments in Iran, culturally generated attitudes towards aspects of HRM itself may produce low job satisfaction, and thus may compromise the implementation of HRM practices. We also argue that, since the cultural conditions that create these anomalies are common to other Middle Eastern and Southern Asian countries, our results can be generalized to these regions. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for practitioners.