Orly Shapira-Lishchinsky

Psychological Empowerment as a Mediator Between Teachers’ Perceptions of Authentic Leadership and Their Withdrawal and Citizenship Behaviors

Purpose: This study explores the mediating role of psychological empowerment on authentic leadership, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), and a variety of withdrawal behaviors among teachers, using the psychological model of perceptions-attitudes-behaviors. Research Design: A total of 366 teachers from 23 randomly selected Israeli schools participated in the study. The research combined self-reports and school records taken at regular time intervals regarding three withdrawal behaviors: lateness, absenteeism, and intent to leave. The model for the hierarchical data (teachers within schools) that included latent as well as manifest variables was analyzed using the Mplus statistical package applying to multilevel analysis. Findings: “Impact,” a dimension of psychological empowerment, was found to mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and OCB, whereas “self-determination, meaning, and competence,” the other dimension of psychological empowerment, was found to mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and absence frequency. No mediating relationship was found for psychological empowerment on authentic leadership and the other withdrawal behaviors of lateness and intent to leave. Research Implications: The present study improves the Ajzen and Fishbein model. While most previous withdrawal behavior studies focused on a single dimension of withdrawal behaviors and did not consider OCB, the present study presents an integrative framework, focusing on the mediating role of psychological empowerment as a consistent link between authentic leadership and a spectrum of teachers’ withdrawal behaviors and OCB. Practical Implications: These findings should encourage principals to promote high standards of authentic leadership to empower their teachers, increase OCB, and reduce absenteeism among teachers.

Organizational Ethics and Teachers’ Intent to Leave: An Integrative Approach

Purpose: The present study focuses on developing a conceptual framework that explores the relationships between teachers’ intent to leave and a spectrum of ethics perceptions. The authors argue that these relationships are mediated by organizational commitment (affective and normative). Research Design: Organizational ethics was measured by teachers’ perceptions of ethical climate (caring and formal), organizational justice (distributive and procedural), and tendency to misbehave. Participants were 1,016 schoolteachers from 35 schools affiliated with a secondary-level school network in Israel. Findings: Results of a multilevel analysis reveal direct relationships between intent to leave and dimensions of all three ethical constructs. The mediation effect of affective and normative commitment was full for caring climate and partial for procedural justice and tendency to misbehave. Conclusions: The contribution of this study is the integrative approach to organizational ethics as predicting teachers’ intent to leave, an approach rarely taken in previous research. The results may have implications for educational policies that focus on improving ethical perceptions while containing teachers’ voluntary turnover.

Teachers' withdrawal behaviors: integrating theory and findings

Purpose – The article aims to investigate the relationships between different dimensions of organizational ethics and different withdrawal symptoms – lateness, absence, and intent to leave work.Design/methodology/approach – Participants were 1,016 school teachers from 35 high schools in Israel. A joint model of Glimmix procedure of SAS was used for this analysis, which simultaneously measures lateness using the negative binomial distribution, absence using the Poisson distribution, and intent to leave using the normal distribution.Findings – Findings indicate that the different dimensions of organizational ethics were related to one another. Formal climate and distributive justice were found to be negatively related to lateness, while a caring climate was found to be negatively related to absence frequency, and procedural justice was found to be negatively related to intent to leave. The results indicate certain differences between ethical predictors, which may arise from extrinsic motivation factors and ...

Towards professionalism: ethical perspectives of Israeli teachers

This study attempted to gain a better understanding of teachers’ perceptions about their ethical dilemmas and roles. Qualitative data were collected by interviewing 32 teachers in seven schools. Interviewees were asked to provide detailed descriptions of ethical dilemmas they had encountered. The coding process focused on critical incidents involving ethical considerations identified as conflictive. Results indicate a large number of dilemmas that can be sorted into five main categories. These include tensions between caring and adhering to formal codes; fair process and fair outcome; school and family agenda; autonomy and educational policy; own religious convictions and that of a colleague. The study may enhance our understanding of teachers’ roles and perceptions regarding these ethical dilemmas. Such understanding may help in the design of teacher education programmes focusing on ethics. More successful dealing with day‐to‐day ethical dilemmas may also help raise the status of the profession.

Teachers' Acceptance of Absenteeism: Towards Developing a Specific Scale.

Purpose – This study aims to develop and validate a measure of a specific attitude toward teachers’ absenteeism that predicts this behavior more accurately than other general measures of job attitudes.Design/methodology/approach – Participants were 443 teachers from 21 secondary schools in Israel. In the first phase, the teachers answered anonymous questionnaires related to their general attitudes and their specific attitude through “absenteeism acceptance”. In the second phase, each teacher submitted copies of his half‐year absenteeism records six months after the end of the first phase.Findings – The authors used CFA to cross‐validate the different job attitudes measures. They confirmed the construct validity of “absenteeism acceptance” through convergent and discriminant validity, finding relatively weak negative relationships between “absenteeism acceptance” and the general job attitudes. The criterion validity and predictive validity of the new measure was confirmed by intercorrelations that were fou...

Simulation-Based Constructivist Approach for Education Leaders.

The purpose of this study was to reflect the leadership strategies that may arise using a constructivist approach based on organizational learning. This approach involved the use of simulations that focused on ethical tensions in school principals’ daily experiences, and the development of codes of ethical conduct to reduce these tensions. The study included 50 teachers who served in school leadership roles in addition to their regular teaching jobs. The teachers participated in 50 simulation sessions. The data were analyzed with ATLAS.ti 5.0. Five dimensions of tensions between leadership strategies were found to be related to the central concept of “Leadership strategies derived from simulations:” Engaging versus Monitoring; Envisioning versus Implementing; Implementing versus Engaging; Monitoring versus Envisioning, and Articulating versus Envisioning—demonstrating the complexity of dialogue during the simulations, which include a multifaceted model of tension between values, and codes of ethical conduct. The study findings may encourage school principals and education leaders to use simulations to help unravel ongoing ethical dilemmas in school for the development of leadership strategies based on organizational and constructivist learning theories. These learning conditions may provide fertile ground for practicing difficult ethical decision-making and thus enhance the professional development of education leaders.

Ethical dilemmas in teaching and nursing: the Israeli case

This article explores a cross‐occupational approach for dealing with ethical dilemmas by comparing teaching and nursing. Findings indicate more shared patterns of ethical dilemmas (such as caring for needs for others versus following formal codes) than dilemmas specific to teaching (e.g., advancing universal values versus advancing knowledge) or nursing (e.g., patient modesty versus hospital policy). The large number of shared dilemmas suggests that results can be applied to a curriculum devoted to ethical dilemmas in high schools and universities in order to better prepare students to handle them. Formal discussions of these dilemmas can help define the roles of these occupations, thereby improving their status.

Ethical Dilemmas: The Experiences of Israeli Nurses

In this study I explored ethical dilemmas in nursing to gain a better understanding of nurses’ work and their professional status. Qualitative data on ethical dilemmas were collected by interviewing 52 nurses in 18 hospitals and health maintenance organizations. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using a stepwise method. Results indicate a large number of dilemmas that can be divided into five main categories: caring vs. following formal codes; fair process vs. fair outcome; organizational standards vs. family agenda; autonomy vs. deference to higher authority, and guarding secrecy vs. duty to report. The study findings might enhance nurses’ ability to cope with ethical dilemmas and bring about change in their professional status. In addition, the results might guide nurses and their supervisors toward developing practitioner programs for nurses that deal with ethical aspects. All these might reduce the expected shortage of nurses and improve the ability of the system to provide quality health care.

Leadership, absenteeism acceptance, and ethical climate as predictors of teachers’ absence and citizenship behaviors

The goal of this study was to explore the mediating role of ‘absenteeism acceptance’ between different leadership styles and school ethical climate (SEC) on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and voluntary absence among Israeli teachers. 304 teachers were randomly selected from 304 different mainstream and special-education schools. The model was analyzed using AMOS 18.0 software. We found that ‘absenteeism acceptance’ partially mediated the relationship between transactional leadership, SEC and OCB, and also found that SEC and transactional leadership positively predict OCB. The theoretical contribution of this study is rooted in its integrative approach. While most previous studies focused on a single leadership style, this study focused on the role of ‘absenteeism acceptance’ as a mediator between ethical aspects such as: SEC; leadership styles; and teachers’ behaviors like voluntary absence and OCB. The practical contribution may include developing school principals’ training programs, focusing on transactional leadership and SEC in order to increase teachers’ OCB in schools.

The multifaceted nature of mentors’ authentic leadership and mentees’ emotional intelligence: A critical perspective

The aim of the study was to investigate, from a critical perspective, mentees’ perceptions regarding the persons they view as their influential mentors – whether they regard them as authentic leaders and whether these mentors affect the development of mentees’ emotional intelligence (EI). Using a sample of 62 teacher-mentees from different school levels and different sectors in Israel, semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore participants’ perceptions of mentoring processes that had influenced them professionally. A qualitative analysis, based on a confirmatory approach using ATLAS.ti, revealed that the influential mentors were perceived as authentic leaders, acting within different dimensions of authentic leadership (AL) at different levels. In addition, it was found that mentees perceived their influential mentors as contributing to the development of the mentees’ EI, including different relationships between the various dimensions of AL and the different dimensions of EI. This led to the generation of a multifaceted model which may develop a critical perspective regarding the difficulty of mentoring, considering the uncertainly in mentors’ works. The findings support this critical review of mentoring and, it is argued, will encourage educational leaders to focus on advancing different dimensions of authentic leadership during mentors’ professional development programs, in order to develop different dimensions of mentees’ EI.