The relationship between primary school principals' paternalistic leadership behaviours and teachers' organizational creativity and organizational dissent levels

The aim of the research is to find out the relationship between the PL (paternalistic leadership) behaviours of public primary school principals and teachers' organizational creativity and organizational dissent perception levels according to the perceptions of primary school teachers. Correlational survey method was utilized in the research. The population of the research consists of 2597 teachers working in public primary schools in Mardin city center and 8 districts of Mardin during 2016-2017 academic year. Data collection tools were applied on 1100 teachers selected from the population by methods of stratified sampling and simple random sampling but 1059 were evaluated. The scales used in the research were the "OMPLDÖ (Headmasters' Paternalistic Leadership Behaviours Scale)" developed by Dağlı and Ağalday (2017a), the "OÖYÖ (Organizational Creativity at School Scale)" developed by Çavuş (2006) and adapted to schools by Yılmaz and Sünbül (2008), the "ÖMÖ (Organizational Dissent Scale)" developed by Kassing (2000b) and adapted to Turkish by Dağlı (2015)". The data collected were analyzed by using SPSS and AMOS softwares. T-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to determine whether teachers' perceptions differ according to diverse variables or not. The meaningfulness level was taken as 0,05. The relationship between the teachers' perceptions toward paternalistic leadership, organizational creativity and organizational dissent was examined by correlation and regression analysis. Structural equation modelling was used to determine whether the influence of the paternalistic leadership on organizational dissent was mediated by organizational creativity. The data analysis revealed the following findings: Significant difference was observed between the teachers' perceptions toward their principals regarding the sub-dimension of benevolent leadership with respect to two variables, namely education level and marital status and the sub-dimension of exploitative leadership with respect to gender. Significant difference was observed between the teachers' perceptions toward organizational creativity with regard to three variables, namely "education level", "seniority" and "gender". Significant difference was observed between the teachers' perceptions toward organizational dissent regarding the sub-dimension of lateral dissent according to three variables, namely "education level", "seniority", "gender" and "trade union membership" and the sub-dimension of upward dissent concerning gender. According to the teachers' perceptions, there was a positive, high level and significant correlation between the paternalistic leadership behaviours of primary school principals and teachers' perceptions toward organizational creativity and paternalistic leadership behaviors of primary school principals were found to be a significant predictor of teachers' perceptions toward organizational creativity. According to the teachers' perceptions, there was a positive, low level and significant correlation between the paternalistic leadership behaviours of primary school principals and teachers' perceptions toward organizational dissent and paternalistic leadership behaviors of primary school principals were found to be a significant predictor of teachers' perceptions toward organizational dissent. It was found that organizational creativity has a partial mediating effect toward the influence of paternalistic leadership on organizational dissent. Based on the findings, suggestions were developed both for the practitioners and researchers.