RELATIONSHIP OF THE MULTIFACTOR LEADERSHIP MODEL AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES IN ALL-DAY PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN CREECE

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to highlight the ways in which leaders and/or potential leaders in school practice act and shape their leadership behavior or manage conflict, as well as their interaction on whether they converge or diverge with theoretical and research approaches. The application field of the research was all the teachers in randomly selected Greek all-day primary schools, while the questionnaires of the multifactor leadership model and conflict Management Strategies Scale's, were used as research tools. Following the appropriate analysis methodology, the (N=782) questionnaires were used to draw conclusions based on the research questions. The results show that the dominant style of leadership is transformational, however, some transactional practices are adopted, with a clear distancing from laissez-faire leadership. In addition, a general finding in conflict management is primarily constructive compromising practices, secondarily avoiding practices, while dynamic competing practices are adopted as the last option. The Pearson correlation revealed the existence of a statistically significant positive and/or negative correlation of varying intensity between the three styles of multifactor leadership and the conflict management strategies, except for laissez-faire leadership and compromising. From the multiple regression analysis, it emerged that the compromising strategy positively predicts the variance model of transformational and negatively predicts laissez-faire. Avoiding and competing strategies negatively interpret the variance model of transformational leadership and positively the transactional and laissez-faire leadership.