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Principal ambidextrous leadership that contains two contradicting leaderships is the key to school development and teacher work engagement. This conceptualisation is also well aligned with the cultural values embedded in the Chinese educational context. However, how principal ambidextrous leadership combining transformational and transactional leadership affects teacher work engagement remains unclear. We aimed to figure out when and how ambidextrous leadership promotes teacher work engagement through school climate. To explore these mechanisms, this study surveyed 1,498 teachers from six provinces in mainland China to examine the mediation model with a moderated direct effect incorporating transformational leadership, transactional leadership, school climate, and teacher work engagement. The key results show the following: (1) Ambidextrous leadership, operationalised as the interaction term of transformational and transactional leadership, significantly and positively predicts teacher work engagement; (2) School climate mediates the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and teacher work engagement; (3) The main effect of ambidextrous leadership on teacher work engagement is moderated by the balance of ambidexterity (i.e. the absolute difference between transformational and transactional leadership). Specifically, when the absolute difference between transformational and transactional leadership is low, the positive predictive effect of ambidextrous leadership on teacher work engagement is stronger. The research findings provide valuable insights for educational practice.
Zhang et al. (Mon,) studied this question.