IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

Why Is There a Disequilibrium Between Power and Trust in Educational Settings?
Faruk Levent
Marmara University, Turkey
Nehir ÖzdemirMarmara University, Turkey
Tuba Akpolat
Marmara University, Turkey

91

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between school administrators' powersources and teachers' organizational trust levels according to the teachers’ perceptions. The
sample of the study, which employed a survey research method, consisted of 401 school
teachers, working in both the private and public sectors in Istanbul, Turkey. One data
gathering instrument of the study incorporated the “School Administrators’ Organizational
Power Sources Scale” developed by Zafer (2008) and the other was the “Organizational Trust
Scale” first developed by Daboval, Comish, Swindle and Gaster (1994) and adapted toTurkish by Yılmaz (2005). Descriptive statistics and parametric analysis tests were used todetermine the relationship between the power and trust dimensions. According to the researchfindings a moderately positive relationship was found between power sources except coercive
and all organizational trust subscales. There is a positively low level of relationship between
coercive power and all organizational trust sub-dimensions. There is a positively moderate
relationship between sensitivity to employees and communication environment subdimensions of organizational trust and legitimate power, as well as a low positive relationshipwith openness to innovation and trust to administration subscales. Thus, the results revealed
that sub-dimensions of organizational power significantly predicted organizational trustscores.
Keywords: trust, education, power, administration, teacher, leadership

92

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

Introduction
Today, increasing technological, economic and political developments make organizationalchange inevitable, including in educational organizations. During this process of change, theways in which educational leaders use the power sources they have gain importance.
An education system’s ability to fulfil its functions effectively at school level depends on theknowledge and abilities of the school administrator first of all. A head-teacher who canprovide this success needs to be well trained in behavioral sciences as well as having
knowledge about the concepts and processes related to school management. At this point,
educational administration is not only an expertise, but also a combination of personal skills,
experiences and knowledge (Nathan, 2013). Within this knowledge and skills, the ability ofschool administrators to influence the teachers and other staff is very important and illustrates
their form of power. Ability to influence with power is one of the basic ways to create
behavior change in subordinates and this causes productivity to increase because the essenceof the power concept consists of the ability to have control over the behavior of others(Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn, 2002). According to Raven and Kruglansky, the concept of
power is a form of influence that controls over the conflict and chaos (cited in Benzel, 1983).
In this way, the use of power sources is regarded as a factor to reduce mistrust in the chaotic
environment of organizations. In this context, the problematic question of this study is; Is
there any significant relationship between the power sources used by administrators and theorganizational trust that teachers feel in educational organizations?
Educational organizations, like other organizations, should be able to adapt to the everchanging and evolving conditions. It should be taken into consideration that the power sharedby the organization during the modernization of schools is the winning power and that thesharing of power by the administration will create an environment based on trust and synergy(Taymaz, 2005). The concept of trust is a significant influence that increases the level ofproductivity of educational organizations and basically this concept is the product of a
relationship based on honesty and integrity. According to contemporary approaches, theconcept of trust is the most fundamental resource for the coordination of individuals who
have common goals (Shrum, Chompalov & Genuth, 2001). In terms of organizational trust, it
is seen that the variables such as a leader's capabilities, prestige and philanthropy are thebasic preconditions for creating an environment based on trust in organizations. Therefore, it
is seen that this trust environment influences employees’ skills such as creativity andorganizational commitment (Tan, H. & Tan, C., 2000). According to the literature, Daboval,
Comish, Swindle and Gaster’s (1994) Organizational Trust Scale consists of four subdimensions of trust: sensitivity towards the employees, trusting to the principal, openness toinnovation, and communication environment (as cited in Yılmaz, 2005, see p. 84).
Organizational trust provides positive outputs for the organization and employees directly
and indirectly. In the determination of the trust level, one of the important variables is theorganizational power sources used by the administrations. Even though there are limited
studies which examine the organizational trust perception and organizational power sources
relationship effect on educational organizations (Karadag & Bektas, 2013; Altınkurt &Yılmaz, 2011), there have been different studies related to this subject for different
professional groups in different organizations (Bachman, 2001). The research is important for
explicating the relationship between these two variables (power and trust) in terms ofeducational organizations. In fact, it is believed that the relationship between the trust93

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018atmosphere, which affects the productivity level of teachers, and the power sources used byadministration has an important contribution to the related literature.
Literature Review
According to Weber, power is defined as “the ability of an individual to achieve their own
goals or aims when others are trying to stop them from realising them and having influenceon others” (as cited in Ordonez Asenjo, 2014, p. 7).
According to the French and Raven, social power in some systems is defined as the
maximum potential ability of social agent to influence others and they classified the power infive different categories as legitimate, reward, coercive, expert and referent power sources(1959, p. 261). Even though information power is added as a sixth power source to thisclassification later on, in some sources it has still been included in the field of expert power(as cited in Goethals, Sorenso & Burns, 2004, p. 210). ‘Expert’ and “Referent” power sources
are related to personal properties of the administrators and expert is based on a person's highlevels of skill and knowledge whereas referent is based on a person's perceived attractiveness,
worthiness and right to others' respect. The “Legitimate”, “Reward” and “Coercive”
dimensions are positional power sources and they are defined as: legitimate power source isbased on the formal right to make demands, and to expect others to be compliant andobedient, reward power source results from one person's ability to compensate another forcompliance, and coercive power source comes from the belief that a person can punish others
for noncompliance (Daft & Marcic, 2014, pp. 489–490).
On the other hand, the concept of trust, that is considered to be influenced by power sources,
is defined as an attention to the sensitivities of the other side. According to Zucker, it isviewed as a confidence that cannot be harmed or put at risk by the actions of the other party(as cited in Jones & George, 1998, p. 531). In addition, the feeling of trust, which is seen as
the most important social capital of school organizations, will lead to a culture shared throughthe suitable power used by school administrators and this shared culture will contribute to thecreation of trust in the staff (Zalabak, Morreale & Hackman, 2010).
There are sub-dimensions of trust defined in the literature. The most common sub-dimensionsof trust are defined by Daboval, Comish, Swindle and Gaster (1994). They have come to theconclusion that there are four different sub-dimensions of trust. These sub-dimensions are (ascited in Yılmaz, 2005, p. 54):••••

Sensitivity towards the employees: It refers to administrator’s understanding andrespect of staff. For this sub-dimension, the support of the managers raises staff interms of productivity and feeling trust.
Trusting to the principal: It refers to staff’s trust of the administrators’ fairness andexpertness. The emphasis of the administrator is to be generous in sharing informationand to develop a sincere and honest relationship with his staff.
Openness to innovation: It refers to administrator’s eagerness and effort in creating
effective and positive organizational change and development, thus the environmentof trust can easily be created.
Communication environment: It refers to staff’s right to share ideas and feelings forthe organization without hesitation and the importance of conveying the information
to the employees in a correct and timely manner.

94

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

MethodThe target population of this study were 4877 primary, middle and high school teachers,
working in private and public schools in Eyup/Istanbul and Tuzla/Istanbul during the 2016–2017 academic year. The research sample size can be assessed in an approximate 95 per centconfidence interval for different size of populations and the participant number wasdetermined in accordance with the relating sampling table (Anderson & Olkin, 1994). A totalof 4877 teachers should be represented by a sample of 356 participants according to the 95%
certainty level. Considering the problems that may be encountered during the completion ofquestionnaires, 450 questionnaires were distributed of which 401 were returned. The total
number of participants according to demographic values is provided in Table 1.
Table 1: The Number of the Questionnaire Respondents
GenderFemale
Male

N
258
183

%
54
46

Class
Branch

59
342

15
85

0-5 years
6-10 years
11-15 years
16 years and over

170
108
77
46

42
27
19
12

Undergraduate
Graduate

298
103

74
26

PublicPrivateUnion Membership
MemberNon-member

253
143

63
37

167
234

42
58

BranchSeniority

DegreeSchool TypeOf the subjects, 54% of them were female (258 participants) and 46% were Male (183participants), 15% participant teachers (59) worked in primary schools and 85% participantteachers (342) worked in middle and high schools. As a seniority variable, 42% of them had
0-5 years of experience (108), 27% of them had 6-10 years of experience (108), 19% of themhad 11-15 years of experience (77), 12% of them had experience over 16 years (46). Of thesubjects, 74% of them had a bachelor degree (298) and 26% of them had a master or PhD
degree (103), 63% of them worked in public schools (253) and 37% of them worked in
private schools (143), 42% of them had membership in teacher unions (167) and 58% ofthem did not have membership in teacher unions (234).
One of the data collection instruments used in the research is the “Organizational Power
Sources Scale” developed by Zafer (2008) and this scale has five different power sources:
expert, referent, reward, legitimate, coercive power. This scale performed well in validity andreliability analysis and as a result of the exploratory factor analysis of the scale, it has been

95

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

found that explanation variances of each dimension varied between 53% and 62% whereas
Cronbach Alpha coefficients, which were the indicators of reliability, were between .82 and.94.
The other data collection instrument is the Organizational Trust Scale developed by Daboval,
Comish, Swindle and Gaster (1994) and adapted to Turkish by Yılmaz (2005) after
displaying good validity and reliability and it has four subdimensions: sensitivity towards theemployees, trusting to the principal, openness to innovation, communication environment.
Total variance explained by the scale is found to be 52%, whereas Cronbach Alphacoefficient is .97.
For this study, data was analyzed by SPSS (23.0 version). In order to determine which
statistical techniques should be used to analyze quantitative data, the Shapiro-Wilk H Test
was first conducted. As a result of the test, parametric techniques such as Pearson ProductMoment Correlation Analysis were applied during the analysis of data on the normality of
research data.
Findings
As a result of the analysis of the data, basic findings were obtained for the problematic
situation to be answered. In this context, the mean scores and the standard deviation scores of
the teachers' perceptions of sub-dimensions of Trust Scale scores are shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Mean and Standard Deviation Values for Organizational Trust Sub-dimensions
Sub-dimensions

Mean

Standard Deviation

Communication environment
Sensitivity towards the employees
Trusting to the principal
Openness to innovation
Total Trust Score

3.53
3.29
3.52
3.38
3.42

1.36
1.25
1.47
1.02
1.20

As shown in the Table 2, it is seen that the organizational trust levels were perceived in theform of communication environment (X = 3.53), sensitivity towards the employees (X =3.29), trusting to the principal (X = 3.52), openness to innovation (X = 3.38) and the total
trust score (X=3.42). Accordingly, teachers perceive the communication environment subdimension as the highest of all.
For this study, according to the participant teachers, the mean and the standard deviation
values of the power sources used by the administrators are given in Table 3.
Table 3: Mean and Standard Deviation Values of Power Resources Used by Administrators
Sub-dimensions
Expert Power
Referent Power
Reward Power
Legitimate Power
Coercive Power

Mean
3.55
3.43
3.41
3.83
3.53

96

Standard Deviation
.84
.94
.95
.71
1.36

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

According to the perceptions of the teachers, it is seen that the power source used at thehighest level is the legitimate power (X = 3.83), then expert power (X = 3.55), coercive force(X = 3.53), referent power (3.43) and the last one is reward power (X = 3.41).
According to the teachers’ perceptions; the results of the Pearson Product-Moment
Correlation Analysis, conducted to determine the direction and dimension of the relationshipbetween the organizational trust attitude’s subdimensions and the power sources used by theadministrators are shown in Table 4.

Openness toinnovation

Communication
environment

Total Score of trust

Expert power

Referent power

Reward power

Legitimate power

Coercive power

Sensitivity
towards
employees
Trust toprincipal

r 1p.838**.000.399**.000.870**.000.952**.000.390**.000.389**.000.388**.000.321**.000.254**
.000

r
p

1

.306**.000.924**.000.954**.000.315**.000.287**.000.289**.000.217**
.000

.086
.087

Openness toinnovationrp

1.304**.000.430**.000.839**.000.914**.000.898**.000.743**.00.538**.000

Communication environmentrp

1.957**.000.341**.000.307**.000.307**.000.285**.000.157**.002

Total score of
trust

r
p

1

.425**.000.412**.000.411**.000.340**.000.216**.00

Expert Powerrp1.906**.000.784**.00.783**.000.526**.000

Referent powerrp1.804**.000.763**.000.495**.000

Reward powerrp1.754**.000.495**.000

Legitimate
power

r
p

1

.665**.000

Coercive
power

r
p

Sensitivity towards
employees

Trust to principal

Table 4: Results of Correlation between Organizational Power and Organizational Trust

1

As shown in Table 4, it is seen that there is a positively moderate relationship between thesensitivity towards employee sub-dimension and the power of expert, referent, reward andlegitimate power, while there is a positively low relationship between sensitivity towards theemployee’s sub-dimension and coercive power. There is a positively moderate relationship97

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

between organizational trust’s sub-dimension, trust to principal and expert power andpositively low relationship with referent power, reward power, and legitimate power, but nosignificant relationship with coercive power. Organizational trust’s openness to innovation
sub-dimension has a positively high level of relationship with expert power, referent power,
reward power, legitimate power and coercive power. Organizational trust’s communication
environment sub-dimension has positively moderate relationship with the expert, referent andreward power sources while it has positively low relationship with legitimate power andcoercive power.
When the relationship between organizational trust and power source types is examined
separately, it can be said that there is a positively moderate and significant relationshipbetween expert, referent power, reward power and organizational trust total score from thefindings; expert power (r = 0.425), referent power (r = 0.412), reward power (r = 0.411),
legitimate power (r = 0.340) and coercive power (r = 0.216). Accordingly, it can be said thatthe effective use of expert, referent and reward power sources increases the level of trust
environment in educational organizations. There is a much lower relationship between
legitimate power, coercive power and organizational trust in comparison with the other powersources.
Discussion and Conclusion
Today, organizations that are under the influence of globalization need to envisageorganizational change and innovation in order to meet growing expectations and make adifference from their competitors in increasingly competitive environments. For
organizations that want to keep up with the 21st century conditions, change can sometimes
create pressure and stress due to employees' self-renewal and development efforts. Thissituation which is inevitable for almost all organizations is also valid for educationalorganizations. Organizations’ and schools’ complex structures, the problems created by theinability to share corporate resources, differences in worldviews and judgments of values,
sense of self or power battles originating from work position, communication problems
between employees and their goal differences can create a chaotic and insecure atmosphere inorganizations. It is important to work in a peaceful and safe environment between theteachers and the administrators at the point where educational organizations fulfill their goals.
Creating this environment of trust is one of the main tasks of the administrators and this ispossible with the correct and effective use of the power sources of the ones at the
management level of schools.
In the light of these thoughts, the aim of this study was to clarify if there is any significant
relationship between the power sources used by administrators and the organizational trustthat teachers feel in educational organizations. At this point, it will be a contribution to therelated literature area whether the power sources used by school administrators in educationalorganizations affect the atmosphere of trust affecting teachers and if so, it is also necessary toknow the level of this effect. It is also useful to see which power sources influence the trust
environment in educational organizations.
According to Kratzer's (1997) research there is a positive relationship between open
communication and organizational trust in educational organizations. Also, it has been foundthat creating a trust environment in schools depends on the teachers’ ability to establish clear
relationships with each other. As a result of this trust environment, it has been observed thatteachers can share their professional secrets with each other, establish their strategies and98

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

fulfill their tasks successfully and can share materials and plans with each other (Kratzer,
1997, p. 26). In a study they conducted together, Jones and George aimed to identify factorsthat contributed to organizational trust in educational organizations and found that these were
the factors of employee qualifications, environment, organizational structure, organizational
climate and interpersonal relationships (Jones & George, 1998, pp. 542–543). When the levelof organizational trust is examined in this study, it is seen that the average scores of thecommunication environment are the highest among organizational trusts sub-dimensions
score. As a result of this research and on the basis of the study of the literature, it is seen thatinter-teacher communication is an important element in providing an environment of trust at
schools.
In a study conducted by Sheehan, teachers’ feelings of trust toward the school administrator
contribute their improving positive attitudes toward the school and their involvement inschool management. Also, as a result of the high organizational trust in educationalorganizations, the teachers’ level of risk and initiative taking increases (Sheehan, 1995, pp.
136–137). In this study, feeling trust towards the principal was encountered as an elementthat increases organizational trust level and it is seen that trust to principal sub-dimension is
the most perceived one after the communication environment sub-dimension.
This study, which was conducted in order to determine the relationship between school
administrators' power sources and organizational trust according to teacher perceptions in
educational organizations, shows that the bureaucratic, decentralized and vertical hierarchicalstructure of the National Ministry of Education in Turkey has the legitimate power source as
the most used by school administrators. School administrators who are responsible for
implementing the laws and regulations coming from the Ministry have to develop a lawbased management approach to ensure the general operation of schools. Since politicalinterventions are frequently carried out in Turkey through legislation and regulations, it ispossible for law enforcement officials to use legitimate power as a way of ensuring that
employees adapt to these frequently changing educational policies. Other power sources usedby school administrators in this study are respectively expertise, coercive power, referent
power and the lowest one is reward power. When the related literature is examined, Altınkurt
and his colleagues (2014) conducted empirical studies on power sources used by school
administrators in relation to power preferences of school administrators show that according
to the teachers’ perceptions, school administrators used the legitimate power most of all(Altınkurt, Yılmaz, Erol & Salalı, 2014, p .51). Similarly, Kocabaş (2016), in his master’s
thesis study, examined the views of teachers about the power sources used by the school
administrators. Participant teachers stated that school administrators first received their powersource from laws and regulations (Kocabaş, 2016, p. 121). In a study of school
administrators' power sources, conducted in Washington State, it has been determined thatthe most used power sources are referent power and expert power (Benzel, 1983, p. 101).
In another research study, according to Lyons and Murph, when school administrators'
experience in the same institution increases, it has become clear that the school
administrators use the authority powers (especially the legitimate power), which are moreorganizationally sourced ones. It has been argued by the researcher that administrators havelost their teaching and learning activity skills as they gain managerial experience and thus
have lost the ability to use the expert and referent power sources, which are the ideal powersources for their organizations to achieve their goals (as cited in Tschannen-Moran & Gareis,
2004, pp. 574–575). However, the use of personality powers such as expert and referent plays
a more effective role for successful management of schools in the related literature (Benzel,

99

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

1983, pp. 7–8). Moreover, as mentioned before, legal regulations in Turkey cause school
administrators to use legitimate power more effectively than the usage of referent and expert
power.
Based on the results of this study, there is a moderate and positive relationship between
organizational trust and expertise, referent, rewarding and legitimate power; there is a low
positive relationship between organizational trust and coercive force. Also, a moderate
positive relationship between school administrators' power sources and organizational trust,causes the concepts of power and trust to be considered as concepts has similar effects on
educational organizations. Similarly, other investigations have shown that organizational
power is a concept that greatly affects organizational trust (Bachman, 2001; Altinkurt &Yilmaz, 2011; Karadag & Bektas, 2013).
Considering the effects of organizational trust on the organizational outcomes, theexplanatory effect of power sources used by the school administrators should be taken into
consideration in a broad sense, that’s why it may be useful to carry out more studies in thisarea in educational organizations.

100

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

References
Altınkurt, Y., & Yılmaz, K. (2011). Relationship between the school administrators' powersources and teachers' organizational trust levels in Turkey. Journal of Management
Development, 31(1), 58–70. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621711211191005
Altınkurt, Y., Yılmaz, K., Erol, E., & Salalı, E. T. (2014). Okul müdürlerinin kullandığı güç
kaynakları ile öğretmenlerin örgütsel sinizm algıları arasındaki ilişki. Öğretmen Eğitimive Eğitimcileri Dergisi, 3(1), 25–52.
Anderson, T. W., & Olkin, I. (1994). Multivariate analysis and its applications. IMS. Lecture
Notes - Monograph Series.
Bachman, R. (2001). Trust, power and control in trans-organizational relations. Organization
Studies, 22(2), 337–365. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840601222007
Benzel, B.L. (1983). An analysis of the power base preferences of schoolintendents inconflict resolution sSituations. (Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Gonzaga University,
Spokane, WA).
Daft, R. L., & Marcic, D. (2014). Understanding management. Stamford, CT: Cengage
Learning.
French, J. R. P., & Raven, B. (1959). The bases of social power. (pp. 259–269). MichiganAnn Arbor: Institute for Social Research.
Goethals, G. R., Sorenson, G. J., & Burns, J. M. (Eds.). (2004). Encyclopedia of leadership.
AE (Vol. 1). Sage Publications.
Jones, G. R., & George, J. M. (1998). The experience and evolution of trust: Implications forcooperation and teamwork. Academy of Management Review, 23(3), 531–546.
Karadag, E., & Bektas, F. (2013). The analysis of relationship between organizational power
and organizational trust. European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences, 2(4),597–600.
Kocabaş, C. (2016). Okul Müdürlerinin Güç Tipi Tercihleri ile Kriz Yönetimi Becerileri
Arasındaki İlişki. (Unpublished Masters Thesis, Pamukkale University, Denizli,
Turkey).
Kratzer, C. C. (1997). A community of respect, caring, and trust: One school's story. Paper
presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago.
Nathan, M. (2013). A handbook for headteachers. Routledge.
Ordonez Asenjo, C. (2014). Power, social identity and fashion consumption: A thesis on how
female executives use power-coded dressing as a tool to accentuate power as a part oftheir social identity. (Unpublished Masters Dissertation. Stockholm University,
Stockholm, Sweden,
Schermerhorn, J. R., Jr., Hunt, J. G., & Osborn, R. N. (2002). Organizational behaviour (7thed.). USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Sheehan, J. (1995). Trust as related to school reform, specifically site-based management.
(Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Marquette University, Milwaukee, MI.
Shrum, W., Chompalov, I. & Genuth, J. (2001). Trust, conflict and performance in scientificcollaborations. Social Studies of Science, 681–730.
https://doi.org/10.1177/030631201031005002
Tan, H. H., & Tan, C. S. (2000), Towards the differentiation of trust in supervisor and trust inorganization. Genetic, Social and General Psychology Monographs, 126(2), 241–260.

101

IAFOR Journal of Education

Volume 6 – Issue 1 – Spring 2018

Taymaz, H., (2003). İlköğretim ve Ortaöğretim Okul Müdürleri İçin Okul Yönetimi, Pegem-A
Yayıncılık: Ankara.
Tschannen-Moran, M., & Gareis, C. R. (2004). Principals' sense of efficacy: Assessing apromising construct. Journal of Educational Administration, 42(5), 573–585.
Yılmaz E. (2005). Okullardaki Örgütsel Güven Düzeyinin Okul Yöneticilerinin Etik LiderlikÖzellikleri ve Bazı Değişkenler Açısından İncelenmesi. (Unpublished PhD Dissertation,
Selçuk University, Konya, Turkey).
Zafer, D. (2008). İlköğretim Okul Yöneticilerinin Kullandıkları Örgütsel Güç Kaynaklarınaİlişkin Öğretmen Görüşleri. (Unpublished Masters Dissertation, Sakarya University,
Sakarya, Turkey).
Zalabak, P. S., Morreale, S., & Hackman, M. (2010). Building the high-trust organization:
Strategies for supporting five key dimensions of trust (Vol. 7). John Wiley & Sons.

Corresponding author: Nehir ÖzdemirContact email: nehirozdemir@marun.edu.tr

102