The relationship between the communication skills of elementary principal and organizational conflict level

The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between primary school administrators? communication skills and organizational conflict based on the teacher perceptions.The population of the study comprises 2935 teachers working in 86 primary schools in Malatya city center. The sample of the study is 615 teachers selected using proportional stratified sampling method.The instrument used to collect data consists of three parts. In the first part of the scale, there are questions about teachers? personal information. The second part is the ?Communication Competence Scale? which was developed by Wiemann (1977), and last part is devoted to ?Organizational Conflict Inventory? developed by Rahim (1983).The findings from the study revealed that teachers generally find the principals? communication skills (empathy, social relaxation, and affiliation/support) as adequate in terms of such variables as gender, educational background, and seniority. Also it was found that the perceptions of the teachers about the principals? communication competence significantly differ by the subject fields of the teachers, and principals? age and subject field.The perceptions of the teachers about the level of organizational conflict in school setting differ in terms of gender and educational background of the teachers. The perceptions of the female teachers about the level of organizational conflict were found to be lower than those of male teachers. The perceptions of the teachers with a degree (MA or PhD) about the level of organizational conflict were found to be ?sometimes? and significantly lower than those of teachers with an undergraduate degree. The perceptions of the teachers about the level of personal conflict differed in terms of teachers? subject field and seniority variables. Guidance and Counseling, ELT, and Turkish teachers were found to experience less personal conflict than the teachers in other subject fields. Those teachers with 11-20 year seniority were found to experience less intra-group conflict than teachers with 2-5 year, 6-10 year, and 21 year and more seniority. Teachers with 11-20 year seniority were found to experience more inter-group conflict than teachers with 2-5 year seniority.Teachers? perceptions about organization conflict do not differ according to the age of the principal. The perceptions of the teachers about organizational conflict at personal conflict subscale and in overall scale were found to differ in terms of subject field of the principal. The perceptions of the teachers whose principals? subject field is mathematics, religion and culture, or other about personal conflict were found to be at the lowest level. In terms of total score from organization conflict inventory, perceptions of the teachers whose principals? subject field is mathematics were found to be at the lowest level, and finally the perceptions of the teachers whose principals? subject field is visual arts were at the highest level.The correlation between the communication competence of the principal and organizational conflict was found .042. The correlations between the communication competence of the principal and the each conflict subscale are respectively .17 for personal conflict, -.235 for intra-group conflict, and .39 for inter-group conflict. The correlation between communication competence of the principal and organizational conflict was found low in this study.It was also observed that the perceptions of the teachers about the communication competence of the principal (high, moderate and low communication competence) differed significantly in intra-group conflict subscale, inter-group subscale and in total organizational conflict score. No significant difference, however, was observed in the perceptions of the teachers about the communication competence of the principals (high, moderate and low communication competence) at personal conflict subscale. It was also found that the teachers perceiving the principals? communication competence as high perceive the level of intra-group organizational conflict as lower than those teachers perceiving the principals? communication competence as moderate and low. Moreover it was found that the teachers perceiving the principals? communication competence as high perceive the level of inter-group organizational conflict as higher than those teachers perceiving the principals? communication competence as moderate and low, and the teachers perceiving the principals? communication competence as moderate perceive the level of total organizational conflict as higher than those teachers perceiving the principals? communication competence as low and high.