Esther Yassur: The relationship between organizational climate and school leadership style

This study has a double focus: (1) to examine the factors that characterize organizational climate, leadership, and the nature the relationship between these, and, (2) to analyse their influence on school effectiveness and on teacher satisfaction. The investigation is based on the Contingency Model of Fiedler and Chemers, which predicts the most effective match between leadership style and conditions of the situation. Relationship or task oriented leadership style is determined by using the score of the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC). The Contingency Model predicts that task oriented leaders function more effectively in the most and in the least favorable situations. In contrast, relationship oriented leaders achieve the best group performance in intermediate situations. These research findings appear to indicate that the style of management does not greatly contribute to the explanation of the effectiveness of the school and the satisfaction of the teachers from their work. It is organizational climate that seems to have a decisive contribution to the explanation of effectiveness and satisfaction. It is possible to predict school effectiveness and teacher satisfaction from work primarily from the knowledge of the organizational climate and, to a lesser degree, that of leadership style. Thus, some of the basic assumptions of the present research study have been confirmed. The analysis of the findings that address the examination of the research clearly shows that the scores of school effectiveness rose as organizational climate improved. This was more prominent in the schools characterized by relationship oriented management than in the ones with task oriented management. A similar picture is seen in the examination of the findings addressing teacher satisfaction. These findings also indicate that the only meaningful significant factor that influences the satisfaction of the teachers is organizational climate, because teacher satisfaction increases with more positive organizational climates. The clear educational conclusion arising from this study is that in order to increase school effectiveness and teacher satisfaction, the organizational climate must be improved.

MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 101. Number 2. 171-190. (2001)

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