Servant leadership as a predictor of high school principals’ organizational trust

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate servant leadership as a predictor of high school principals’ organizational trust. A correlational research method was utilized in this study. The sample population consisted of 103 subjects, of whom 52 were male and 51 female. Page and Wong’s servant leadership questionnaire and Ellonen, Blomqvist and Puumalainen’s Organizational Trust questionnaire were used. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.90 for the servant leadership questionnaire and 0.93 for the organizational trust questionnaire. Pearson’s correlation coefficient and stepwise regression were utilized for data analysis. Results revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between servant leadership and organizational trust. Stepwise regression analysis revealed that among the components of servant leadership, components create a spirit of leadership (35%) in the first step while the prospective component (6%) in the second step was the most predictive of organizational trust. In fact, these two components together explained 41% of the variance in organizational trust.