Meaning-making leadership model in non-profit organizations

The aim of the study is to investigate what the meaningfulness of the work is for volunteers and to investigate the role of the leaders' attitudes and behaviors in constructing this meaningfulness. As a result, it is to develop the meaning-making leadership scale. In line with the purpose of the study, a mixed study consisting of three research was conducted on the volunteers of various NPOs. The first of these reserach is the creation of an item pool; the second is the development of the draft scale and the third is the testing of the validity and reliability of the draft scale. In the first study, which was conducted with a qualitative method, a phenomenological design was used. The sample of this research consists of 30 volunteers. The collected data were analyzed by content analysis. As a result, 9 sources of meaning emphasized by the volunteers were reached. It has been determined that 11 attitudes and behaviors of leaders that make the job meaningful and 10 that make the job meaningless are emphasized. In addition, it was found that if the participants themselves were managers, they would implement 14 positive attitudes and behaviors in order to make the work meaningful. As a result of this research, an item pool of 53 statements was formed, consisting of the attitudes and behaviors of the leaders that support the meaningfulness of the work. In the second study, which was carried out with a quantitative method, data were collected from a sample of 245 people and the psychometric properties of the item pool were tested. A draft scale with 6 factors and 32 items was designed from an item pool consisting of 53 items. In scale; Altruism, Constructive Relationships, Democratic Management Approach, Positive Feedback, Training, and Instilling Meaning factors are included. It has been determined that the validity and reliability values of these dimensions are at a significant level. In the third and last study conducted with a quantitative method, data were collected from a sample of 492 people. With this research, the construct validity, criterion validity and reliability of the scale were tried to be verified. When the results of the analyzes were examined, the structure of the "Meaning-Making Leadership Scale" consisting of 6 factors and 32 items was confirmed. Thus, the final form of the scale was obtained. Also, it has been determined that there is a high level of relationship between the meaning-making leadership scale and the meaningful work. Thus, the criterion-based construct validity of the meaning-making leadership scale was confirmed. Besides, in the context of demographic variables, the relationship between meaning-making leadership and meaningful work was examined and significant results were obtained.