The Impact of Leadership on the Communication Satisfaction of Primary School Teachers in Serbia.

AbstractThis paper presents the results of research into the effects of leadership on the communication satisfaction of teachers. The data was obtained by giving questionnaires to 362 teachers from 57 primary schools in Serbia. Leadership is shown to have a strong and positive impact on the communication satisfaction of teachers in Serbian primary schools. The following dimensions of leadership have the strongest influence: Core Transformational Leadership Behavior, Contingent Reward Behavior, and Intellectual Stimulation. The moderating effect of teachers' gender and age was examined with the observed relationships. The moderating effect of gender was confirmed in three dimensions of communication satisfaction: Communication Climate, Horizontal & Informal Communication, and Organizational Integration. Any moderating effect of age was not confirmed. Primary school principals in Serbia should devote considerable attention to developing leadership and communication skills. This would serve to achieve an increase in communication and job satisfaction among teachers, which potentially creates the conditions for the improved and effective functioning of schools.Keywords: Leadership * Communication satisfaction of Teachers* Primary schools * SerbiaLeadership and Communication in SchoolsA number of authors have dealt with the influence of leadership styles on job performance, organizational commitment and satisfaction (Breckenridge, 2000; Vries, Roe, & Taillieu, 1998). Kabacoff (2002) remarked that it would be useful to know what impact personal characteristics such as age have on leadership practices which are theoretically based on some suggested principles. The reference of Bycio, Hackett, and Allen (1995) suggests that leadership has a significant effect on organizational performance. Agle, Nagarajan, Sonnenfeld, and Srinivasan (2006), on the other hand, found that organizational performance was associated with the subsequent perceptions of the CEO's charisma but that the perceptions of the CEO's charisma were not associated with the subsequent organizational performance. Similar to this, De Hoogh et al. (2004) revealed that charismatic leadership was positively related to the outcome of common-source and multisource perceptual performances (i.e., positive work attitude of subordinates) and to the profitability of an organization. However, it was unrelated to the liquidity and solvency of an organization.Many references point out the importance of leadership in schools (Aubrey, Godfrey, & Harris, 2013; Barnett & McCormick, 2012; Hallinger & Heck, 2010; Pashiardis, Savvides, Lytra, & Angelidou, 2011). Day, Harris, Hadfield, Tolley, and Beresford (2000) concluded that diverse countries from different school contexts have revealed the powerful impact of leadership processes on school effectiveness and improvement. According to Xie & Shen (2013), teacher leadership is still confined to the classroom level. According to Sergiovanni (1991), educational leadership can no longer be viewed simply as the practice of implementing policy and maintaining the system. The principal must put new strategies and new processes in place, as well as develop a new mind set for the success of the education system. The Leadership Trust (2011) reported that leadership practices for predicting and developing change include being a facilitator, a mediator and a process consultant. They also involve the ability to propose ideas for improving workplace practices and running effective group communication.A number of authors indicated that communication is central to leadership (Awamleh & Gardner, 1999; Den Hartog & Verburg, 1997; Frese, Beimel, & Schoenborn, 2003; Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996; Riggio, Riggio, Salinas, & Cole, 2003; Spangler & House, 1991; Towler, 2003). Some research studies examined the effects of leadership styles in relation to effective communication skills (Fairhurst, 1993) as well as interpersonal communication (Quick & Macik-Frey, 2004). …