<![CDATA[Background: Within the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Indonesia, the performance of employees plays a decisive role in sustaining organizational effectiveness. Nevertheless, empirical understanding of how transformational leadership, work culture, human resource quality, and employee performance are interrelated, both directly and indirectly, remains scarce in this hybrid institutional context. Objective: This research aims to analyze how transformational leadership and work culture affect employee performance, both directly and through the mediation of human resource quality, within the Planning Division of the Ministry of Defense. Methods: The study applied an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. In the quantitative stage, data were gathered from 145 respondents drawn from a population of 227 employees through simple random sampling, then processed with descriptive statistics and path analysis. The qualitative stage relied on semi-structured interviews involving five key informants, whose responses were examined through thematic analysis. Results: Transformational leadership exerted a significant influence on both human resource quality (β = 0.502, p < 0.001) and employee performance (β = 0.437, p < 0.001). Work culture likewise had a significant effect on human resource quality (β = 0.359, p < 0.001) and on employee performance (β = 0.302, p < 0.001), while human resource quality significantly shaped employee performance (β = 0.244, p < 0.001). The mediated pathways—transformational leadership (β = 0.152, p = 0.001) and work culture (β = 0.108, p = 0.002) acting through human resource quality—were also statistically significant. Conclusion: Taken together, transformational leadership, work culture, and human resource quality jointly reinforce employee performance. The qualitative evidence further suggests that military discipline, administrative accuracy, flexible task execution, and commonly held organizational values promote collaboration between TNI and ASN personnel.]]>
