TEACHER ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR AND PRINCIPAL EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: HOW THEY RELATE AND INTERACT

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence, if any, that a building principal’s emotional intelligence has on the amount of organizational citizenship behavior exhibited by teachers. Organizational citizenship behaviors are economically irrational. OCB’s cannot be required as part of the job and are discretionary. Preforming such task requires motivation that is irrational. Traditional conventional leadership research fails to give plausible productive insights to how Principals can foster OCB. An emotional appeal or connection between the leader and follower has been found to foster. Selfless or altruistic acts require an emotional connection or appeal to provide the motivation to participate in them. Principal emotional intelligence may bridge the gap and assist in creating the necessary emotional connection or appeal. EI has been found to have a positive relationship with OCB directed at individuals as well as the organization (Turnipseed & Vandewaa, 2012). This study is significant because it provides insight into the question: Does the emotional intelligence of a Principal foster teacher participation in organizational citizenship behaviors? Ten schools from the same school district in northwest Missouri participated in the study. Participation in the study was determined based on the successful completion of the EI assessment on each Principal. The EI assessment chosen for the study was the ability based 360º Emotional Competency Inventory created by Richard Boyatzis. The assessment consisted of 36 questions on a 5pt Likert scale that needed to be completed by at least 3 colleagues on the Principal to be included in the study. Upon successful completion of the ECI on a given Principal, all teachers from that building became eligible to complete the OCB survey. The OCB survey consists of 10 demographic and 22 OCB questions on a 5pt liker scale. The survey is from OCB research conducted by Kerrie Herren (2014), who adapted the scales created by Podsakoff, Ahearne, and Mackenzie (1997) to fit an educational setting. Teachers were asked to respond to the OCB questions based on their perception of the actions of the teachers in their building as a whole. The results found that the overall measure of a principal’s emotional intelligence was not significantly related to teacher organizational citizenship behavior. This is potentially due to individual competencies that are positively and negatively significant canceling to comprise the overall EI. Competencies found to be significantly negative were: emotional self-control, pattern recognition and networking. Whereas, teamwork, achievement orientation, empathy and initiative were all found to be significantly positive.