Multifactor leadership styles and organizational uncertainty according to the perceptions of secondary school teachers

The objective of this study is to determine the relevance between the leadership styles of the school administrators and the levels of organizational uncertainty according to the perceptions of the teachers that work in secondary schools. It was identified whether there were significant differences in the perceptions of the teachers according to the variables of their gender, age, marital status, professional seniority, length of service at the school and branch. In addition, it was tried to determine whether there is a meaningful relationship between teacher perceptions of school principals' leadership styles and organizational uncertainty. The population of the research consists of 1279 teachers working in secondary schools in Karabağlar district of İzmir province in the 2020-2021 academic year. The research was carried out with the participation of 329 teachers in 25 secondary schools. The "Multi-Factor Leadership Scale" consisting of 34 items and the "Organizational Uncertainty Perception Scale" consisting of 17 items were used in the study, which was carried out using the census/random sampling method. According to the data obtained as the result of the research, the leadership aspects that teachers participate in are transformational leadership, transactional leadership and liberal leadership, respectively. Teachers' perceptions of their principals' leadership styles differ in terms of gender, marital status and professional seniority in the transformational and transactional leadership sub-dimensions. According to the results of the study, organizational uncertainty is perceived as "quite uncertain" by teachers. When examined in terms of sub-dimensions, participation was determined as in the order of informational unclarity, feedback response times, and general uncertainty of causal relevance. Perceptions of teachers show variances according to their age, professional seniority and length of service in the school they are in. Also, there is a variance in the sub-dimension that the feedback takes a long time in respect of their subject of teaching. Relationship between the transformational leadership style of school principals and the general uncertainty of causal relevance exhibits a relation towards low and positive direction. A positive and high-level relationship was found between transformational leadership and feedback, lack of clarity of information, and average organizational uncertainty. There also is a positive and high level of relationship between the interactional leadership sub-dimension and the feedback taking a long time, unclarity of information, and the overall scale. A negative and high-level relationship was observed between the liberal leadership style and the feedback that takes a long time, unclarity of information, and the general average of the scale. Multiple regression test was applied to determine how the leadership styles chosen as independent variables predict the perception of organizational uncertainty. Accordingly, it was concluded that the general sum of organizational uncertainty perception of the sub-dimensions of transformational leadership and permissive leadership was a significant predictor of the sub-dimensions of long-time feedback and lack of clarity of information. Keywords: Leader, leadership, leadership styles, organizational uncertainty.