The relationship between power sources of school principals and organizational silence behavior of teachers

The Relationship Between Power Sources of School Principals and Organizational Silence Behavior of Teachers In this study, determining the relationship between power sources of school principals and teachers' organizational silence behavior is aimed. In this study survey research model was used. The sample of this study is 552 teachers who were teaching in primary, secondary and high schools of center and towns of Kütahya. In this study, data were collected by Organizational Power Scale in Schools and Organizational Silence Scale. In order to determine the participants' views about power sources used by school principals and teachers' organizational silence behavior descriptive statistics, t-test and one-way ANOVA were used. Moreover, in order to determine the effect of school principals' power source preferences on teachers' organizational silence behavior, multiple regression analysis was used. According to the findings obtained from this study, school principals mostly employ their expertise power, followed by legislative power, charismatic power, reward power and coercive powers respectively. Teachers' perceptions regarding the school principals' preferences about power sources differ in some dimensions according to their seniority, age, type of school they are teaching, field and school district variables but does not differ according to gender. The level of teachers' organizational silence is moderate. The silence behavior of teachers differs in some dimensions according to the type of school and school district but does not differ according to gender, seniority, age, and field variables. When the power sources used by the school principals are considered as a whole, there is a meaningful and moderate relationship between organizational silence behaviors of teachers and the power sources used by school principals. According to the results of t-test to determine the significance of the regression coefficients, reward power, coercive power and charismatic power are significant predictors of organizational silence behaviors of teachers. The power sources used by the school principals explain more than one-fifth of the total variance of organizational silence. While school principals' use of coercive power increases the level of silence behavior of teachers, usage of expertise and charismatic power decrease the silence behaviors of teachers. Keywords: Power, power sources, teacher, organizational silence, silence