Effects of Leadership Styles on Organizational Health

Abstract

This article examines the effects of the leadership style of the principal, “transformational leadership and transactional leadership”, along with teachers' job satisfaction on school's organizational health. Specifically speaking, it investigates to what extent the variations in school health can be related to principal's leadership style and teachers' job satisfaction. To this end, a Likert-type questionnaire was administered to 635 teachers out of 875-person sample, working in Turkish schools. To explain the direct and indirect relationships between the dependent and independent variables, Path Analysis was used. As a result of the analysis, the most striking finding is that transformational leadership has a profound impact on teachers' job satisfaction, while the transformational leadership of the principal directly affects the school health and through teachers' job satisfaction it indirectly affects the school health. Summary National Education Basic Law, 1973 and numbered 1739, stated that one aim of high school education is to prepare students for higher education. The fact that sixty thousand of the one million five hundred students who took the University Entrance Exam (ÖSS) in the 1999-2000 educational year got zero point, caused authorities of the National Education and researchers to focus on these schools. Only the students of general high schools among the other types of high schools were unsuccessful formed a field of interest for the researchers and they found this subject worth investigating. The Problem Making all high schools have a healthy organizational structure has become the aim of many researchers. In Turkey, no research on the influence of job satisfaction of teachers on the organizational health of the schools and the leadership styles that school leaders show in their schools has been done. Researchers sometimes investigated job satisfaction and leadership styles individually (Balcı, 1985; Pehlivan, 2000; Özdayı, 1991; Kabadayı, 1982; Çelik, 1998; Karip, 1998). However, they have never done a research relating both of them. The researches done on the job satisfaction of teachers in Turkey have revealed an important fact. It was found that the payments of teachers are insufficient (Koçak, 2002), in the research on the relationship between the leadership styles of leaders and the job satisfaction of teachers (Kabadayı, 1982; Alıç, 1985), and in the research on the relationship between job stress and job satisfaction (Özdayı, 1990) it was concluded that the job satisfaction level of teachers was low. The result of this research made it necessary to deal with this subject and search it again. Without doubt another topic that is too obvious to be discussed is the effect of the leadership styles that the leaders show in the schools on the job satisfaction of teachers. A lot of researches done on this subject revealed that the proper leadership styles that the leaders show in their schools is an important factor on the job satisfaction of the employees (Howell and Avolio, 1993; Bogler, 2001). Under the light of the explanations above in this study how much the varieties of the organizational health of the school can be related to the leadership styles of the director and the job satisfaction of the teachers. Answers to the following questions will be searched in this study. 1. What kind of relationship is there between the transformational leadership behaviour and the organizational health of the schools? 2. What kind of relationship is there between the transactional leadership behaviour and the organizational health of the schools? 3. What kind of relationship is there between the transformational and transactional leadership styles and the job satisfaction of the teachers? 4. Have the transformational leadership style and the job satisfaction of the teachers and effect on the organizational health of the school? Method 630 teachers are working in 46 high schools in the metropolitan area of the province of Ankara and they took part in this study.284 (%45) of the teachers were female and 346 (%55) of them were males. 13 of the school principals of the 46 high schools in our study were female and 33 of them were male. 39 of these school managers were assigned after completing a six-month manager training course and 7 of them were assigned without completing such a course. The participants were asked to answer likert-type questions in three different questionnaires, MLQ (Bass and Avolio, 1985), OHI (Hoy, 1991) and Job Satisfaction of Educational Administrators developed by Balcı (1985). Pearson correlation coefficients among the variables were calculated. Path analysis was used to be test the hypothesized causal relationships. Findings As can be seen in Table 3 the organizational health of the school is significantly related to transformational leadership (r=.58, p<.0001), the job satisfaction of teachers (r=.55, p<0001), and transactional leadership (r= - .00, p<.001). Another relationship among the sub measures is between the perception of teachers about job satisfaction and the perception of school leaders as being transformational leaders (r=.53). The relationship among the variables showed that the organizational health of the school increased when the teachers perceived their leaders as transformational leaders at a higher level, the level of job satisfaction they got from their job and the school leaders showed less transactional leadership. To test the model in Figure 1, Path analysis was used. The aim of this analysis was to be able to make the logical explanations of the causal relationships among the variables. The most striking finding of the Path analysis was that the transformational leadership style that the principals showed in the school affected the job satisfaction of the teachers strongly (p.56, p<.05). The transformational leadership of the school principal affected the school health both directly (β=.46, p<.05) and indirectly through the job satisfaction of teachers (β=.47, p<.05). Moreover, the job satisfaction of the teachers affects the organizational health of the school directly (β=.34,p<.05) p<005). The model explains the %64 of the total variance. Discussions and Suggestions The most interesting finding of this study is that transformational leadership has a strong effect on teachers' job satisfaction. Transformational leaders' actively involved in employees' individual value systems increases the inter-organizational relations into the top level. Moreover, such leaders have a strong effect on the staff by creating a common goal in the school, easing the communication and managing the education to establish and develop the aims of the school (Cruz, 1995; Eblen, 1987; Jung, Chow and Wo, 2003). This situation might increase the quality of mutual relations and the inner motivation of the employees. This finding is similar to the findings of the researches that tested the positive relationship between the principal's transformational leadership style and the job satisfaction of the teachers (Houseknecht, 1990; Mraschilok, 1993; Everett, 1991). Organizational health is a useful structure that describes the mutual personal relations of the teachers, students and managers in the school. In other words, in healthy organizations teachers like school, students and each other .They consider the principal as their supporter to develop education. They trust their principal because they believe that their principal is a sensitive person towards their social and emotional needs. These findings must be accepted by the Ministry of Education, policy maker's supervisors and local managers of education Leadership styles that have such a strong effect on job satisfaction of teachers and the organizational health of the school must have the position it deserves.

Keywords

• organizational health , leadership styles , transformational leadership.

Örgütsel Sağlık Üzerinde Liderlik Stillerinin Etkisi

Öz

Bu araştırma, müdürün liderlik biçiminin “dönüşümsel liderlik, etkileşimci liderlik” ve öğretmenlerin iş doyumunun okulun örgütsel sağlığı üzerindeki etkilerini incelemektedir. Daha spesifik olarak, okulun örgütsel sağlığındaki çeşitliliğin ne kadarının müdürün liderlik stilleri ve öğretmenlerin iş doyumu ile ilişkilendirilebileceği araştırılacaktır. Bunun için Türkiye'deki okullarda görev yapan 875 öğretmene likert tipinde sayısal bir anket uygulandı ve öğretmenlerin 630'u ankete cevap verdi. Bağımsız değişkenlerle-bağımlı değişken arasındaki direkt ve indirekt ilişkileri açıklamak için Path analizi kullanıldı. Analiz sonucunda elde edilen en ilginç bulgu şu idi. Okul müdürlerinin okul içerisinde gösterdikleri dönüşümsel liderlik stilinin güçlü bir şekilde öğretmenlerin iş doyumunu etkilediğidir. Dönüşümsel liderlik biçimi aynı zamanda okulun örgütsel sağlığını direkt ve öğretmenlerin iş doyumu etkisiyle de endirekt olarak etkilemektedir.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• örgüt sağlığı , liderlik stilleri , dönüşümsel liderlik

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