Investigating the relationship between leadership orientations and social intelligence levels of sports manager candidates

This study aims to investigate the relationship between leadership orientations and social intelligence levels of sports manager candidates. 379 (155 female and 224 male) sports management senior students from randomly chosen eight üniversities in different regions affiliated to the Higher Education Council participated in the study. Two different data collection tools were used. Leadership Orientation Scale was used in determinig the candidates' leadership orientations and Tromso Social Intelligence Scale was used in specifying their social intelligence characteristics, while Personal Information Form developed by the author was used in gathering demographic information about them. Results were analyzed by using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 20.0 program. T-test and one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used and Pearson correlation coefficient value was calculated during the analysis process. According to the results, regarding the candidates' leadership orientations and social intelligence levels there is a significant difference among the variables of gender, branch of sports, actively involved in sports, affialted university, voluntariness. However, there was no significant difference between age and the school graduated from. In addition, while no significant difference was found among their social intelligence levels, there is a significant difference among the candidates' leadership orientations regarding parents' education level. Results were discussed in accordance with the literature and suggestions were provided.