The intermediary effect of organizational cynicism and psychological capital on the relationship between toxic leadership behaviors of school administrators and school effectiveness

The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between the toxic (poisonous) leadership, school effectiveness, organizational cynicism and psychological capital variables with respect to the opinions of teachers working in secondary school institutions. In this study, designed through the descriptive screening and relational screening model, there were no sample groups and all the teachers in the population were contacted. With this respect, 808 teachers working in the secondary schools during the 2015-2016 school year in the center of Elazığ province participated in the study. Teacher opinions were gathered for the study through the Toxic Leadership Scale, School Effectiveness Scale, Organizational Cynicism Scale and Psychological Capital Scale. In addition, the Personal Information Form was used to gather demographic information. The SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 23.0 software programs were used for data analysis. With this respect, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), Pearson's coefficient of correlation, descriptive statistics, t-test, one way variance analysis (One-Way ANOVA), Mann-Whitney U Test and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analyses were conducted. According to the findings of the study, teacher perceptions concerning toxic leadership behaviors of their school administrators are at low level for all dimensions; their school effectiveness perceptions are at moderate level; their organizational cynicism perceptions are at low level and their psychological capital perceptions are at moderate level for the optimism dimension and high level for the psychological resilience, hope and self-efficacy dimensions. With respect to the gender variable, toxic leadership, school effectiveness, organizational cynicism and psychological capital perceptions of teachers significantly differ according to the; self-advertisement, unpredictability, narcissism (toxic leadership), affective (organizational cynicism), psychological resilience and hope (psychological capital) dimensions. There were no significant differences between school effectiveness and the exploitive supervising, authoritarian leadership (toxic leadership), cognitive, behavioral (organizational cynicism), optimism and self-efficacy dimensions. With respect to the marital status variable, teacher perceptions on toxic leadership, school effectiveness, organizational cynicism and psychological resilience and hope (psychological capital) dimensions do not significantly differ but a significant difference was observed at the optimism and self-efficacy (psychological capital) dimensions. Teacher perceptions on toxic leadership, school effectiveness, organizational cynicism and psychological capital did not significantly differ with respect to their branch and educational background. With respect to the type of school variable, no significant differences were observed in teacher perceptions on toxic leadership, organizational cynicism and psychological capital but a significant difference was observed concerning their school effectiveness perceptions. No significant differences were observed between professional seniority and toxic leadership, psychological capital, cognitive and affective (organizational cynicism) perceptions of teachers but a significant difference was observed between school effectiveness and behavioral (organizational cynicism) dimension. On the other hand, a low level, negative and significant relationship was observed between all dimensions of toxic leadership and school effectiveness and all dimensions of psychological capital except for authoritarian leadership (toxic leadership). While a low level, negative and significant relationship was observed between authoritarian leadership (toxic leadership) and optimism (psychological capital), no significant relationships were observed between psychological capital, hope and self-efficacy (psychological capital) dimensions. In addition, a moderate level, positive and significant relationship was observed between all dimensions of toxic leadership and the sub-dimensions of organizational cynicism. Similarly, a moderate level relationship was observed between school effectiveness and cognitive and affective (organizational cynicism) dimensions and a low level, negative and significant relationship was observed between the behavioral (organizational cynicism) dimension. A moderate level relationship was observed between optimism and hope dimensions of psychological capital, another variable of the study, and school effectiveness, and a low level, positive and significant relationship between school effectiveness and self-efficacy (psychological capital) with school effectiveness. Finally, findings on the intermediary role of organizational cynicism and psychological capital show that organizational cynicism and psychological capital have an intermediary role over school effectiveness of toxic leadership.