Primary principals' leadership styles, school organizational health and workplace bullying

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine the relationships between leadership styles of primary school principals and organizational health and bullying.Design/methodology/approachTwo hypotheses were formulated in relation to the research. Three instruments were used – a multi‐level questionnaire for measuring leadership, an Organizational Health Inventory (OHI‐S), and a negative acts questionnaire (NAQ) for measuring workplace bullying. The questionnaires were administered to 500 teachers working in primary schools in Turkey. Path analysis was conducted using the AMOS programs; other statistical analyses were conducted via LISREL and EQS 6.1 programs.FindingsThere is a positive relationship between transformational leadership acts of principals and organizational health and a negative relationship between the transformational leadership acts of principals and workplace bullying. While a reverse relationship between organizational health and workplace bullying is identified, there is a relationship between transactional leadership acts of principals and organizational health. No relationship between transactional leadership acts of principals and workplace bullying is found.Practical implicationsThese results suggest the desirability of principals striving to improve transformational leadership behaviors in order to develop their schools as healthy organizations and to solve the problem of bullying therein.Originality/valueSeveral resources are provided as tools, such as the NAQ, the OHI‐S, and the multifactor leadership questionnaire. These may be profitably used in similar studies.