Leadership Styles and Organizational Commitment of School Heads of Public Elementary Schools: Bases for Intervention Program

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Leadership can be defined as the process of directing and influencing the task-related activities of group members. In line with this, six leadership styles were explored in this study: coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching. In today's picture of management as performed by school heads, it is true that one of the reasons that decreased organizational trust reduces organizational effectiveness and productivity to low level of organizational commitment.

METHODS

A descriptive method was used with the questionnaire checklist as the main tool for the collection of data. The questionnaire seeks to pinpoint the preferred leadership style and gauge the organizational commitment of 129 public elementary school heads in the Third Congressional District of Quezon which were chosen through stratified random sampling technique. In interpreting the data, the researcher utilized the frequency count, percentage, weighted mean score, t-test, and Pearson product moment of correlations using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences.

RESULTS

The study shows that school heads of public elementary school prefer a democratic style of leadership. There is no significant difference between the overall leadership style of principals and head teachers. The research also shows that the school heads possess organizational commitment, and it shows no significant difference between the two distinct positions among the school heads. Although there is a significant relationship among all the leadership styles and the organizational commitment of the school heads, the T-test reveals that there is no significant difference between the organizational commitment and coercive and authoritative leadership style while such difference exists between their commitment and affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching leadership styles. It implies that the latter set of leadership styles are effective in enhancing the organizational commitment of the school heads.

DISCUSSIONS

The results suggested the need to craft an intervention program that will address multi-faceted dimensions of commitment, leadership, involvement, and management among elementary school heads for better delivery of public service. Thus, it is very timely that school heads nowadays should have the avenue to rekindle their commitment to the organizations they belong to effectively articulate a vision of the future for the school.