The relationship between organizational commitment and servant leadership levels of the school managers

In the contemporary world, every organization aims to survive for a long time. In order to realize this situation, all organization employees must make an effort. Managing ''human'', which is the most important building block of organizations, is the most important factor in obtaining the desired efficiency. It is very important that the leaders who take on the management duty show themselves the organizational commitment they expect from the employees. Different ideas have been put forward about the characteristics of a leader who developed a sense of commitment to the organization. In this study, the organizational commitment levels and servant leadership behaviors of principles in schools, which are qualified as educational organizations, were examined. In this research, the relationship between organizational commitment and servant leadership levels of school managers working in public kindergarten, primary and high schools in Kırşehir city center and its districts is revealed.It was determined that a total of 384 managers, 156 principals, 12 assistant principals and 216 deputy principals, work in these schools. It was observed that some village schools closed after the bussed education system. Since the study was conducted directly on the research population, sampling was not taken. The research using descriptive-relational screening method was carried out on 315 school principles. Organizational Commitment Scale developed by Balay (2000) was used to collect data on school managers' perceptions of organizational commitment, Servant Leadership Behavior Scale of School Principals developed by Ekinci (2015) was used to collect data on school managers' perceptions of servant leadership. Data collection tools were applied in 2018-2019 academic year fall and spring semesters. Lost data analysis was performed on the research data analyzed in the SPSS program, and new data was assigned to the lost data determined to contain no patterns by means of the average assignment method. On the data collected, reliability analyzes were made again for the Organizational Commitment Scale and the Servant Leadership Behaviors Scale of School Principals and Cronbach Alpa internal consistency coefficients were calculated. Percentage, frequency, arithmetic mean and standard deviation techniques were used to analyze the data. In order to determine whether the perceptions of servant leadership and organizational commitment of principals varies according to age, seniority, gender, marital status, branch, school level and postgraduate education, the t-test was used in two groups and the ANOVA test was used in three or more groups. In addition, the correlation technique was used to reveal the direction and degree of the relationship between the organizational commitment and servant leadership perceptions of the principals. In the research, the level of significance was considered as 0.5. According to the results obtained, the perception of organizational commitment of school principles in the dimensions of identification and internalization is medium while it is low in the dimension of compliance. It was understood that there was a significant difference in organizational commitment levels of school principles in favor of single managers according to marital status; in favor of managers in the area of profession according to field; in favor of managers more experienced according to the year of service. School principles' perceptions of servant leadership were found to be "much" in the sense of empathy and modesty while found to be at the "fully" level for the other dimensions. It has been determined that servant leadership levels of school principles differ according to gender, area, age, year of service and marital status. It has been determined that this difference is in favor of women, married people, senior managers, managers with a long service life and professional managers. Within the scope of the correlation between organizational commitment and servant leadership levels of managers, it was observed that there was a moderately negative relationship between the adaptation dimension of organizational commitment and the altruistic behavior, empathy, justice and honesty dimensions of servant leadership. It has been found that there is a moderately significant positive relationship between the identification dimension and the altruistic behavior, empathy, justice, honesty and modesty dimensions of the servant leadership. There is a high level of positive relationship between the internalization dimension and the altruistic behavior and empathy dimensions of servant leadership; however, it has been determined that there is a moderately significant positive relationship between the dimensions of justice, honesty and modesty.