Gaining and maintaining power strategies and corporate culture at schools

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to determine the perceptions of teachers working in primary, secondary and high schools regarding the gaining and maintaining power strategies and the relationship of these strategies with the corporate culture. Method: In this study, which examined the relationship between teachers' gaining and maintaining power strategies and corporate culture, the correlational survey model, one of the quantitive research methods, was used. The sample of the research consists of 805 teachers working in 55 schools selected by cluster sampling method from public primary, secondary and high schools in Tepebaşı and Odunpazarı districts of Eskişehir province in the 2023-2024 academic year. The data in the study were collected with the "Gaining and Maintaining Power Strategies Scale" and the "Corporate Culture Scale", which were developed by the researcher and on which Exploratory and Confirmatory factor analyzes were performed. Non-parametric tests such as Mann Whitney-U, Kruskal Wallis-H and Spearman Rho correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. Results: According to teachers' opinions, the gaining and maintaining power strategies in schools are nonverbal impression management, influence tactics, impression management and Political tactics, respectively. Teachers' gaining and maintaining power strategies differs according to gender, educational level, professional seniority, years of school service and school type. In the research, a 5-dimensional culture model was created: relationship-oriented culture, innovation-oriented culture, success and competition-oriented culture, power-oriented culture and T-type culture. Then, a scale suitable for the model was developed and data was collected. After the obtained data were turned into a new data set using the aggregation method on SPSS, the model was re-created with the multidimensional modeling method and it was observed that the model created at the beginning of the research and the model after the data collected overlapped. According to teachers' opinions, the corporate culture models seen in schools were measured as Relationship-oriented culture, Innovation-oriented culture, T-type culture, Success and Competition-oriented culture and Power-oriented culture, respectively. Corporate culture differs significantly with the variables of gender, educational status and school type; it does not differ significantly according to professional seniority and school service years variables. Among the sub-dimensions of teachers' gaining and maintaining power strategies, the political tactics and impression management sub-dimensions are negatively correlated with the other four institutional culture sub-dimensions, except for power-oriented culture; The influence tactics sub-dimension has a negative aspect with relationship-oriented culture and innovation-oriented culture, and a positive aspect with power-oriented culture; Nonverbal impression management is positively related to relationship-oriented culture, innovation-oriented culture, success and competition-oriented culture and T-type culture sub-dimensions. Conclusion and Suggestions: As a result of the research, it was found that among the gaining and maintaining power strategies, nonverbal impression management was exhibited the most, while political tactics were exhibited the least. It was revealed that relationship-oriented culture was seen most in schools and power-oriented culture was least seen. With the developed corporate culture model, it was seen that in addition to the four culture types on the X-Y axis, there was a fifth culture type, T type culture. It was observed that corporate culture did not differ according to professional seniority and school service years, but differed according to gender, school type and educational status. In general, it was observed that there was a negative relationship between the sub-dimensions of corporate culture and gaining and maintaining power strategies. Depending on the research results, it is recommended to re-apply both scales with different demographic variables, in different cities, in public or private educational institutions, by reaching more teachers, in order to re-test the validity and reliability of the scales. It is also recommended that the developed corporate culture model be reached in more schools to determine the dominant culture type in schools and to conduct additional research on T-type culture. Keywords: Gaining and maintaining power strategies, institutional culture, political tactics, influence tactics, impression management.