The impact of leadership styles and motivations: lessons from Open Source Software projects for educational organizations

Abstract

This work focuses on the Open Source Software (OSS) topic in education, using a leadership and motivational perspective. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the teachers’ motivation to contribute to OSS projects for teaching. A structural equation model (SEM) has been defined under the postulates of the Path-Goal leadership theory and Motivational Behaviour. This model has tried to explain and predict the use of OSS solutions by teachers in an educational context. The findings confirm the positive relationships between transactional and transformational leaderships with extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Additionally, the findings show the positive relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations and the contributions to the OSS project in teaching. This research suggests several implications for both leaders and members of an OSS project in an educational context. First, the contribution of teachers and instructors to the project is greater when the motivation is fostered by the leader. Second, this study finds that motivating the participants of a project – teachers in this case – is highly recommended, in order to reach a successful adoption of OSS solutions for education.