transformational leadership and organizational commitment of secondary school ... motivation, and contingent reward, while a significant negative relationship ...
Journal of Administrative Management, Education and Training (JAMET) ISSN: 1823-6049 Volume (12), Issue (2), 2016, 219-226 Available online at http://www.jamet-my.org
Citation: V.Mehdinezhad, F.Ganjali, The Relationship between Transformational Leadership and High School Principals’ Organizational Commitment, Journal of Administrative Management, Education and Training, Volume (12), Issue (2), 2016, pp. 219-226
The Relationship between Transformational Leadership and High School Principals’ Organizational Commitment V.Mehdinezhad, F. Ganjali ABSTRACT The main objective of this research was to explain the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment of secondary school principals. The research method was a descriptive study of correlational type, which was performed on 103 secondary school principals (51 females and 52 males). The sampling method was of a stratified simple random type proportional to size. To collect the data, the questionnaires of Bass and Avolio's transformational leadership (1992) and Meyer and Allen's organizational commitment (1997) were employed. The research data analysis was done by calculating frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviation and using correlation coefficient and step-by-step regression tests. The results showed no statistically significant relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment of the principals. Also, a significant positive relationship was seen between the dimension of emotional commitment relevant to a dimension of organizational commitment and the factors of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, and contingent reward, while a significant negative relationship was observed between the factors of management by exception and laissez-faire leadership. Moreover, a significant positive relationship was found between the variable of normative commitment related to a dimension of organizational commitment and the dimension of inspirational motivation. The regression test revealed that the factors of laissez-faire leadership and inspirational motivation can predict about 14% of the variance of organizational trust. Keywords: Transformational Leadership, Organizational Commitment, Principal, High School
Introduction The current era has been named as an era of radical and accelerated changes and transformations. Various organizations including educational institutions have been also in the course of the gust of these changes. These organizations are forced to coordinate themselves with these rapid and unprecedented changes for survival and update their manpower and software applications parallel
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Journal of Administrative Management, Education and Training (JAMET)
to hardware changes. Along this route, changes in management practices and organizational leadership are inevitable since the traditional methods of management and leadership lack the necessary effectiveness in today's changing and dynamic conditions (Leithwood, 1992; Liontos, 1992). Today's organizations need leaders who can create the necessary commitment and enthusiasm in their subordinates via their personality characteristics, exceptional charismas, high penetrations, and broad visions to take the utmost advantage of their talents and efforts and achieve organizational objectives. Such leaders have been named as transformational leaders today (Burns, 1978; quoted by Bass & Schermerhorn, 1996; Robbins, 1377; Colvin, 2002; Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999; Robbins & Colter, 1999). MacGregor Burns as the first intellectual man to introduce a transformational leadership against transactional leadership approach in 1978 (Schermerhorn et al., 1997; Leithwood, 1992; Colvin, 1999; Crawford & Dierks, 1992; Bass, 1997; Bleedorn, 1983) believes that transformational leaders are those who can create high levels of needs, motivations, values, and morale in their subordinates via their visions, insights, and personality characteristics (Colvin, 1999). In addition, quoting from Rittner (1996), Burns maintains that only transformational leaders are able to draw necessary and novel routes for new organizations. These leaders are the sources of substantial changes, while they are fully aware of the changes governing organizations and embarking upon the waves of changes. Such leaders can provide a better and clearer picture of their future, effectively explain their insights to their followers, and persuade them to have challenges with exceptional businesses (Zali, 1998). He believes that transformational leaders are those who inspire their followers and are able to provide them with good morale and guide them in a way that provides their organizational benefits. These persons can cause the followers act with very high morale and put profound effects on their organizations. Transformational leaders pay a specific attention to their followers' needs and aspects of progress made, while increasing their knowledge and awareness and guiding them in a way that they look to the past issues with a new perspective so that they are encouraged in the shadow of mobility and motivation to then dedicate themselves to the organization and withhold from no efforts for the achievement of organizational objectives. Furthermore, Schermerhorn (1997) states that the term "transformational leadership" describes those who use charisma and its related features to stimulate the aspirations of followers and change organizational systems to achieve high-performance patterns. He also points out that transformational leadership is an inspirational leadership that affects the followers to achieve outstanding performance in a context of innovation and change on a large scale. According to the available evidence on the relationship between transformational leadership and important organizational variables including job attitude and lack of generalizability of the research conducted in the political, economic, and commercial fields to educational environments, the researcher of this article sought to carry out the present research with an important job attitude, i.e. organizational commitment so as to achieve reasonable and scientific results in the field of transformational leadership. The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment of principals. In this regard, the following questions are reviewed:
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• What is the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment of principals in general? What is the relationship between the seven factors of transformational leadership and three components of principals' organizational commitments? Which one of the factors of transformational leadership better predicts principals' organizational commitments? Research method The research method was descriptive and of a correlational type. The study population consisted of 141 high principals of Zahedan City. From among them, 103 individuals were selected using Krejcie and Morgan's sample size table (1970) based on stratified simple random sampling proportional to size. The characteristics of the study population sample are shown in Table 1. Table 1. Characteristics of the sample population Variable Gender
Age
Education Level
Management experience
Groups Male
Frequency 52
Percentage 50.5
Female
51
49.5
>35 36-40 41-45
21 29
20.4 28.2
36
35.0
