The Mediating Role of Trust in School in the Relationship Between the Types of Power Exerted by School Principals and the Organizational Citizenship Behaviors of Teachers

This study tests the mediating effect of teachers' trust in their schools on the effect of power types used by school principals on teachers' organizational citizenship behaviors. The study was designed as a cross-sectional survey model. Since exploring mediating role of organizational trust was our focus, the mediation model was also tested. The sample of the study consisted of 439 teachers who responded to the online scales and were evaluated from 19.758 teachers working in public schools in Van in 2020-2021. In addition to personal information, Power Type Scale, Organizational Trust Scale in Schools, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale were used to gather data. In the study, mean and standard deviation values were calculated. To determine the relationship between variables, correlational analysis was performed. Path analysis was also used to test the structural equation model. Results revealed that teachers who work with school principals using personal or reward power have high trust in their schools, whereas legitimate power is not a significant predictor of school trust and coercive power is a low predictor of school trust. Results also mirror that teachers who have a high sense of trust in their schools report more organizational citizenship behaviors. The direct relationship between the use of power and organizational citizenship behavior was not found significant. As a result of the indirect effect of teachers' trust in their schools in case of school principals' use of personal, reward, legitimate or coercive power, the total effect size between these two variables was found to be significant. This study adds nuance to the literature by suggesting that the behaviors of school principals influence the perception of trust in school and that this perception is reflected in teachers' behaviors.