Investigation of the relationship between the leadership styles of scholl principals and organizational happiness

The main purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between school principals' leadership styles and organizational happiness. 406 teachers working at different education levels in private and public schools in Bolu city center, Gerede and Mudurnu districts in the 2021-2022 academic year, participated in this study, which was prepared by using the relational survey model, one of the quantitative research methods. The teachers participating in the research were selected by cluster sampling method. In order to collect the data of the research, "Personal Information Form" was used to determine the demographic characteristics of the teachers, the "Leadership Styles Scale" developed by Akçekoce and Bilgin (2016) was used to determine the leadership style exhibited by school principals and the "Organizational Happiness Scale" adapted into Turkish by Arslan and Polat (2017) was used to determine the organizational happiness levels of teachers. The obtained data were processed into SPSS 23.0 program to be analyzed. Due to the abnormal distribution of the obtained data, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test were performed. When a significant difference was found as a result of the Kruskal Wallis test, the Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine the reason for the difference. Spearman Rho rank correlation analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between school principals' leadership styles and organizational happiness. Linear regression analysis was conducted to determine whether the leadership styles exhibited by school principals were a predictor of teachers' organizational happiness. As a result of the analyses, while teachers have the perception that school principals have ethical leadership style at the most; they think that school principals show cultural leadership style at the least. It is seen that teachers' organizational happiness perceptions are also at a high level. It is seen that there is a positive and moderate relationship between the leadership styles of school principals and their perceptions of organizational happiness. In addition, it was found that the leadership styles of school principals were a significant predictor of organizational happiness and organizational happiness of teachers was predicted by transformational leadership (38.5%), instructional leadership (33.5%), cultural leadership (32.2%), visionary leadership (33.2% and ethical leadership (33.11%). Keywords: Educational organizations, Leadership, Leadership styles of school principals, Happiness, Organizational happiness