Examining school boards’ chaotic leadership style in relation to teachers' job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion

Abstract

School leaders adopt a chaotic style when they abdicate their responsibilities by being unavailable, passive, unpredictable and permissive. Surprisingly, this dark side of leaders’ style has been largely ignored in contemporary research. In a sample of 205 teachers, this cross-sectional study revealed that, an autonomy-supportive style positively related to job satisfaction via need satisfaction, while a chaotic style positively related to emotional exhaustion via need frustration. Latent profile analyses revealed four profiles: highly autonomy-supportive (35%), moderate on both styles (41%), moderately chaotic (18%), and highly chaotic (6%). A group that was low on both styles was not found.