Effects of principal leadership and principal-teacher exchange on teachers' organizational citizenship behavior

The aim of this dissertation was to find the effects of primary school principals? leadership styles and principal-teacher exchange on organizational citizenship behaviors of teachers working at these schools with these principals. Besides effects of variables on each other relationship between variables was also examined. The level of relationships was studied based on correlation coefficents and effects based on path analysis carried out in LISREL.The universe of the reseach was teachers working at primary schools in six municipal districts of Ankara. Following due legal procedures, research was carried out between March and June 2010. In the first and pilot phase, questionnaires were given to 352 teachers and reliability and validity of batteries were computed. In the second phase quesionnaires were distributed to 816 teachers working at 30 primary schools . Of 682 questionnaires collected back from teachers 659 were considered approppriate for analysis. The first questionnaire was Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (commonly known as MLQ) developed by Bass and Avolio, the second questionnaire was Leader-Member-Exchange Multi-Dimensional Scale-12 (LMX-MDM-12) and the third questionnaire was Organizational Citizenship Scale adapted to Turkish by Basım and Şeşen.Findings show that principals? leadership is moderately transformational and transactional though more transactional than transformational. Teachers display a moderate level of organizational citizenship behavior and although teachers? organizational citizenship behavior levels might show significant variations depending on years of service this variaton is not significant along gender. There exists a significant positive relationship between principals? transformational leadership and both leader-member exchange and teachers? organizational citizenship. The relationship between principals? transactional leadership and leader-member exchange and teachers? organizational citizenship is significant yet negative. Path analysis yielded similar patterns of influence among the same variables. Based on findings suggestions were formulated for principals, principal training staff and researchers.