COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE: INDIGENOUS INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF HUMA BETANG CULTURE AND JOB SATISFACTION AS DUAL MEDIATING MECHANISMS IN THE INDONESIAN PUBLIC SECTOR

Abstract

Collaborative leadership is widely prescribed for improving performance in complex public organizations, yet its direct effect on organizational performance is frequently weak or non-significant. This study reframes that anomaly as a theoretical problem and asks how, and through what mechanism, collaborative leadership becomes performance-generating in a non-Western public bureaucracy. Integrating collaborative leadership theory, public leadership theory, institutional theory, and indigenous governance perspectives, the study reconceptualizes Huma Betang culture—the Dayak communal-longhouse ethos—not as a contextual variable but as an indigenous institutional mechanism that transmits leadership into collective performance, operating in parallel with job satisfaction as a psychological mechanism. Survey data from 110 civil servants of the Regional Revenue Agency (BAPENDA) of Central Kalimantan Province, Indonesia, were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (SmartPLS 4) with bias-corrected bootstrapping. The direct path from collaborative leadership to performance was non-significant (β = 0.061, p = 0.419); instead, Huma Betang culture fully mediated the relationship (β = 0.503; ϒ = 0.253) and dominated the parallel psychological pathway by roughly an order of magnitude. The model explained 85.7% of the variance in performance (SRMR = 0.069). The study contributes a theory refinement: collaborative leadership generates public value only after it is institutionalized into culturally shared governance routines. A post-hoc conceptual model of indigenous institutionalization is proposed, extending collaborative leadership theory beyond Western-centric assumptions.