Alan B. Henkin

Teacher-Principal Relationships: Exploring Linkages between Empowerment and Interpersonal Trust.

Purpose – To investigate relationships between teacher empowerment and interpersonal level trust in the principal.Design/methodology/approach – Trust is a fundamental element in well‐functioning organizations. Studies of empowerment, a motivational construct, have suggested that empowering employees is a key factor in managerial and organizational effectiveness. An instrument was constructed to measure perceived teacher empowerment and level of interpersonal trust in the principal. Established measures of psychological empowerment and affect‐and cognition‐based trust were adapted for use in the study. Elementary school teachers in an urban school district in the USA completed the survey instrument.Findings – Teachers who perceived that they were empowered in their work environments had higher levels of interpersonal trust in their principals. Teachers who found their work personally meaningful, and who reported significant autonomy and substantial influence in their work environments had higher levels of ...

Assessing Dispositions toward Cultural Diversity among Preservice Teachers.

Teacher education interventions designed to help individuals acquire understandings and skills needed to work effectively with culturally diverse student populations may not have significant impact unless teachers as learners are willing to explore beyond the familiar comfort zone of the majority cultural status quo. The purpose of this study was to assess preservice teachers’ attitudes toward cultural diversity prior to their entry into multicultural education courses at an urban university. Respondents indicated strong support for implementing diversity issues in the classroom, and high levels of agreement with equity beliefs and the social value of diversity. They did not agree that assimilation to the dominant culture was a requisite for student success.

Teacher team commitment, teamwork and trust: exploring associations

Purpose – To investigate relationships between teamwork, trust and teacher team commitment.Design/methodology/approach – Research has confirmed the value‐added effects of organizational commitment in terms of job performance, organizational effectiveness, and employee retention. This study focused on teacher teams as the unit of analysis, and posited associations between teamwork, viewed as team skills, trust and teacher team commitment. Data were derived from responses of elementary school teachers to an instrument including established measures of teamwork component skills, affective‐ and cognition‐based trust, and team commitment.Findings – Teamwork was found to be a significant predictor of teacher team commitment. Respondents showing higher levels of teamwork skills perceived higher levels of team commitment. Results, while not entirely confirmatory, suggested the importance of trust in the commitment equation.Research limitations/implications – This research was limited by the study sample of elemen...

Structural antecedents and psychological correlates of teacher empowerment

Empowered teachers participate in critical decisions that directly affect teaching and learning. Empowering work environments may enhance professionalism, facilitate teacher leadership, improve the quality of work life, and enable effective implementation of school reform. Process‐based views of empowerment suggest associations between school organizational structures and teacher empowerment, while psychological perspectives on empowerment suggest potential relationships between the phenomenon and cognitive and affective outcomes. Empowerment is considered in terms of teams and teamwork in schools, and relationships between empowerment and commitment to the school are examined.

Exploring associations between employee empowerment and interpersonal trust in managers

Purpose – To explore associations between employee empowerment and interpersonal trust in managers.Design/methodology/approach – An online survey designed to assess empowerment and trust was administered to a random sample of 2,000 salaried employees at a Fortune 500 manufacturing organization in the USA.Findings – Results, bounded by sample and focal organizational characteristics, indicated that employees who feel empowered in their work environment tend to have higher levels of interpersonal‐level trust in their managers.Practical implications – Implications for managers are discussed in terms of enabling employee empowerment, strengthening interpersonal trust, and increasing organizational effectiveness.Originality/value – Highlights how increments in empowerment and trust can mitigate effects of organizational complexity, reduce transaction costs, strengthen relational systems within flatter organizational structures, and diminish the need for supervisory oversight, unproductive controls, and measure...

Organizational Commitment of Teachers in Urban Schools: Examining the Effects of Team Structures

This study examines the effects of four team-based structures on the organizational commitment of elementary teachers in an urban school district. The study model focuses on organizational commitment and includes three intervening, endogenous variables: teacher empowerment, school communication, and work autonomy. Team teaching had both direct and indirect effects on commitment to the school. Curriculum teamwork, governance teamwork, and community-relations teamwork each contributed indirectly to higher levels of teacher commitment. Research results suggest the need for organizational designs and procedures that reinforce teacher identification with and involvement in the school organization.

Organizational commitment of a health profession faculty: dimensions, correlates and conditions

Health professions depend on their faculties to prepare new practitioners, conduct research and provide essential services. Organizational commitment is an important aspect of faculty effectiveness and job performance, and may impact on turnover, absenteeism and interpersonal trust. A survey of organizational commitment, including faculty demographics and workplace variables, was conducted. Respondents were full- and part-time chiropractic faculty working in the United States and Canada. More than 54% of the study population (n = 609) completed and returned the instrument. A large majority of the respondents were male (68.4%) and employed full-time (81.6%). Almost half (47.5%) of the respondents were assigned to the area of patient care at their institutions. This study provides an initial assessment of organizational commitment among chiropractic faculty. Tenure in higher education, gender and age were found to be the most important predictors of organizational commitment.

Empowerment and organizational commitment of chiropractic faculty

BACKGROUND Professionals in chiropractic education retain much of the authority over their work. Their work is impacted, negatively or positively, by their perceptions of their organizations value for their skills and knowledge. Specifically, empowerment and organizational commitment are 2 psychological constructs that may mediate work circumstances and therefore are the focus of this study. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to explore associations between empowerment and organizational commitment among chiropractic faculty. Study design Full faculty survey utilizing descriptive statistics and multivariable analysis. METHODS Surveys were distributed to full- and part-time faculty working in the United States and Canada. The survey included Spreitzers multidimensional measure of psychological empowerment, Meyer and Allens multidimensional measure of organizational commitment, and additional survey items focusing on faculty demographics and workplace variables including sex, age, academic rank, employment status, and primary area of work assignment. RESULTS More than 54% of the study population (N = 609) completed and returned the instrument. A general profile of a chiropractic faculty member emerges as a middle-aged male employed full-time as a teacher in the academic program. Regression analyses suggest that the observed faculty characteristics and the workplace variables are not associated with fit between the faculty members work role and his/her own beliefs, norms, and behaviors regarding the value of the work-related tasks. CONCLUSIONS The level of institutional commitment experienced by the faculty member was associated with the fit between the task, goal or purpose of the job, and the internal standards held by the individual.

Conflict management strategies of principals in site‐based managed schools

Site‐based management depends on collaboration and teamwork among teachers, administrators, and parents. Collaborative decision making in educational systems is frequently characterized by conflict and disagreement, given differing perspectives and opinions among participants, and differing interests in the status quo. School principals, charged with facilitator roles in locally managed schools, are challenged to address resulting conflicts in ways that yield functional synergies and constructive outcomes which enable schools to respond to community needs. The purpose of this study is to develop a profile of preferred conflict management behaviors and strategies of a sample of principals in a large, urban school district who work in site‐based managed schools. Results reflect these principals’ preference for solution‐oriented conflict strategies. Findings are discussed in terms of the changing leadership responsibilities of principals in site‐based managed schools.

Faculty autonomy: Perspectives from Taiwan

Recent legislative initiatives indicate that long-standing traditions of centralized state control of higher education in Taiwan are being displaced by new arrangements emphasizing institutional autonomy. Autonomous institutions are assumed to be flexible and responsive, given their relative freedom from government control. Institutional autonomy is assumed to “trickle down” to organizational members, who are then empowered to devise unique solutions to solve particular problems. Asserted benefits of institutional autonomy may not accrue, however, where organizational members are unable to determine the structures and processes of their work. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between institutional autonomy and dimensions of faculty autonomy. Findings lend conditional support to the claim that faculty members work within the constraints of “regulated autonomy,” where their individual behaviors are delimited by government and management.