Impact of School Principal Leadership Style on Performance Management: A Schooling Agenda

Abstract

Today’s changing milieu, challenges organisations on a regular basis to make strategic changes that will keep them up to date with the transforming atmosphere. This is grounded in the belief that employee commitment can predict organisational and individual outcomes, such as employee turnover, performance, and intention to stay in or leave an organisation. This study argues there is a strong perception that the leadership style has an impact on the performance of the school. From these 13 high schools, 184 teaching staff were selected to participate. These high schools were not performing above the provincial benchmark and teaching staff were selected to participate in this study because teaching is a core duty in this enterprise. The participants were selected conveniently; however, the sample was chosen in such a way that more participants were selected from the schools that were not performing above the provincial benchmark. A multi-factor leadership questionnaire was adopted and used to judge the response of the teaching staff. Overall results show that both transformational and transactional leadership have positive relationships with the organisational commitment. Another important discovery is that transformational leadership is used more than transactional leadership. There were some limitations that contributed to the opposing results in the study. This means that management, by exception passive, is playing a weak role in organisational commitment. The elements of the transformational leadership have consistent averages in the contribution of organisational commitment. In this study, teachers’ perceptions about their own organisational commitment levels, and about school principals’ leadership styles are analysed. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n3p211