The effect of empowering leadership on organizational creativity: Mediation role of positive psychological capital

This study have purposes to determine the perception levels of official primary education school teachers serving in the central districts of Niğde regarding their school principal's empowering leadership behaviors, their organizational creativity and positive psychological capital, to determine whether school principals' empowering leadership, teachers'organizational creativity and positive psychological capital levels differ according to various variables and to reveal whether positive psychological capital plays a mediating role. The relational survey method was used in the research. The universe of the research is teachers working in official primary education schools in the central districts of Niğde in the 2020/2021 academic year; the sample consists of 462 teachers, who were chosen from 39 primary education schools, 20 of which are primary schools and 19 are secondary schools. In the data collection tool used in the research, there are 'Personal Information Form', 'Empowering Leadership Scale', 'Positive Psychological Capital Scale' and 'Organizational Creativity Scale' sections. Datas were interpreted by using percent, frequency, average, one way variances analysis, LSD, t-Test, the Pearson Moments Correlation Coefficient. Additionally, by using structural equation modeling, path analysis was conducted to determine the mediating role of positive psychological capital in the impact of empowering leadership on organizational creativity. The Sobel test was used to determine the significance of the mediating role. It has been determined that there is a positive and significant relationship between teachers' perceptions of school principals' empowering leadership behaviors and teachers' perceptions of organizational creativity and positive psychological capital. It has been determined that positive psychological capital has a full mediating role in the effect of empowering leadership on organizational creativity. It was concluded that school principals should show empowering leadership behaviors and teachers' positive psychological capital levels should be developed in order for teachers to demonstrate organizational creativity behavior. In line with this result, it is recommended to emphasize empowering leadership in schools, as school principals will increase teachers' positive psychological capital levels by exhibiting empowering leadership behaviors and this will allow creativity to emerge in schools. Key Words: Empowerment, Empowering Leadership, Creativity, Organizational Creativity, Positive Psychological Capital, Positive Psychology