Influence of School Managers' Ethical Leadership Behaviors on Organizational Culture: Teachers' Perceptions

Abstract

Problem Statement: Frequently researched, organizational effectiveness is influenced by leadership, organizational culture and climate, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction; additionally, for effective, sustainable management, ethical leadership, which also influences organizational culture, is emphasized. To our knowledge, no previous studies exist on the relationship (and predictiveness) between ethical leadership and organizational culture. Therefore, this study's general purpose was to identify the influence of school managers' ethical leadership behaviors on organizational culture as perceived by teachers. Purpose of the Study: The general purpose of this study is to identify the influence of ethical leadership behaviors of school managers on organizational culture as perceived by teachers. It thus aims to fill a scientific gap in this field and make a contribution by sharing results and suggestions based on our findings. Method: Based on the relational screening model, this descriptive study's participants were 3302 teachers serving in 323 schools in the city of Duzce and its districts during the 2013-2014 school year. The Ethical Leadership Scale (ELS) and the Organizational Culture Scale (OCS) were used as data collection tools. Ethical leadership (and its sub-dimensions) was considered the independent variable, while organizational culture and itssub-dimensions) was the predicted dependent variable. Regression analysis was performed to discover to what extent these variables were predicted. Findings: We found a fairly high level of positive significant correlation between ethical leadership and organizational culture. Regression analysis showed that ethical leadership is a strong predictor of organizational culture. Conclusion and Recommendations: We found a moderate-to-high positive significant correlation between ethical leadership and organizational culture. Regression analysis showed that ethical leadership strongly predicts organizational culture. Our findings revealed a positively significant correlation between ethical leadership behaviors and organizational culture; ethical leadership is a strong predictor of organizational culture. The more ethical leadership behaviors managers display, the more teachers' perceptions of organizational culture positively increase. Recommendations are to implement social and distributional justice among teachers and the fair distribution of awards and punishments, along with transparent inspection.