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Dimensions of Distributed Leadership and the Impact on Teachers' Organizational Commitment: A Study in Secondary Education
Author(s) -
HULPIA HESTER,
DEVOS GEERT,
ROSSEEL YVES,
VLERICK PETER
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2012.00917.x
Subject(s) - distributed leadership , operationalization , psychology , organizational commitment , confirmatory factor analysis , variance (accounting) , multilevel model , shared leadership , social psychology , transactional leadership , structural equation modeling , mathematics , philosophy , accounting , epistemology , business , statistics
In this study, we first operationalized distributed leadership. Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses showed that distributed leadership can be defined from different dimensions: quality and distribution of support and supervision performed by the leadership team; cooperation within this team; and participative decision making. Second, the relation between dimensions of distributed leadership and teachers' organizational commitment was investigated. Multilevel analyses on data from 1,522 teachers in 46 secondary schools indicated that 9% of the variance in teachers' organizational commitment was attributable to differences between schools. Further, the analyses revealed that it is not the distribution of leadership functions among formal leaders that plays a key role in teachers' organizational commitment. The perceived cooperation within the leadership team and the quality of their support are crucial.