Educational Administration Quarterly

http://eaq.sagepub.com Directive Versus Participative Leadership: Two Complementary Approaches to Managing School Effectiveness
Anit Somech Educational Administration Quarterly 2005; 41; 777 DOI: 10.1177/0013161X05279448 The online version of this article can be found at: http://eaq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/41/5/777

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Educational Administration Quarterly Vol. 41, No. 5 (December 2005) 777-800

10.1177/0013161X05279448 Educational Administration Quarterly Somech / DIRECTIVE VERSUS P ARTICIPATIVE LEADERSHIP

Directive Versus Participative Leadership: Two Complementary Approaches to Managing School Effectiveness
Anit Somech

Purpose: The educational literature reflects the widely shared belief that participative leadership has an overwhelming advantage over the contrasting style of directive leadership in organizational and team effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to examine the relative effect of a directive leadership approach as compared with a participative leadership approach on school-staff teams motivational mechanisms (empowerment and organizational commitment) and effectiveness (team in-role performance and team innovation). Method: Data, which were obtained through a survey, were collected from 140 teams selected from 140 different elementary schools in northern Israel. Results: The results of the Structural Equation Model indicated a positive relation between directive leadership and organizational commitment, as well as a positive relation between directive leadership and school-staff team in-role performance. In addition, organizational commitment served as a mediator in the directive leadershipperformance relationship. With respect to participative leadership, the results indicated a positive relation between participative leadership and teachersempowerment, and a positive relation between participative leadership and school-staff team innovation, and empowerment served as a mediator in the participative leadershipinnovation relationship. Implications: These results suggested that managing tensions between directive and participative activities, bottom-up and top-down processes, and flexibility and discipline may provide a key to teachers high performance. Keywords: directive leadership; participative leadership; organizational commitment; empowerment; school effectiveness

s educational reforms of school restructuring and site-based management figure as the common future of todays schools, participative leadership has become the educational religion of the 21st century (e.g., Brouillette, 1997; OHair & Reitzug, 1997). There is substantial consensus that selecting more collaborative strategies becomes crucial for managing teams effecDOI: 10.1177/0013161X05279448 2005 The University Council for Educational Administration

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778 Educational Administration Quarterly

tively (e.g., Blase & Blase, 1996; Boyle, Boyle, & Brown, 1999; Conley & Bacharach, 1990; Klecker & Loadman, 1998; Reitzug, 1994; Wall & Rinehart, 1998). Participative leadership, which is defined as joint decision making or at least shared influence in decision making by a superior and his or her employees (Koopman & Wierdsma, 1998), offers a variety of potential benefits. It is likely to increase the quality of the decisions (e.g., Scully, Kirkpatrick, & Locke, 1995), to contribute to the quality of teachers work lives (e.g., Somech, 2002), and to increase teachers motivation (e.g., Armenakis, Harris, & Mossholder, 1993; Locke & Latham, 1990; Yammarino & Naughton, 1992) and satisfaction (Smylie, Lazarus, & Brownlee-Conyers, 1996). This movement reflects the widely shared belief that participative management has an overwhelming advantage over the contrasting style of directive leadership in organizational and team effectiveness (e.g., Bryk, Easton, Kerbow, Rollow, & Sebring, 1993; Hargreaves, 1994). Directive leadership, which is defined as providing the members with a framework for decision making and action in alignment with the leaders vision (Fiedler, 1989; Sagie, 1997; Stogdill, 1974), was associated with defective decision making and with deterioration in performance by school-staff teams (e.g., Dunlap & Goldman, 1991; Gaziel, 1998). However, although most previous research positions these two leadership styles as contrasting at the opposite ends of a single continuum and portrays them as mutually exclusive (Lewis, Welsh, Dehler, & Green, 2002), recent reviews and meta-analyses of the literature that covered both practices have indicated that both direction and participation help in increasing worker productivity. For example, Wagner (1994) concluded that the overall effect of participation on worker attitudes and performance is positive but small. Similarly, leader direction was found to increase employee performance (Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994; S. E. Murphy & Fiedler, 1992; Sagie, 1996). The supposed contradiction between directing and participation notwithstanding, both succeeded in improving work outcomes (Sagie, Zaidman, Amichai-Hamburger, Teeni, & Schwartz, 2002). Based on this research, one may question whether the two leadership styles, the participative and the directive, are compatible or contradictory. Given that each style has potential strengths and weaknesses, this study would like to suggest that each leadership style has some advantages over the other, depending on the desired team outcome. Specifically, the purpose of the research was twofold. First, it aimed to enlighten our understanding of the benefits of each leadership style by evaluating its relative effectiveness for two team outcomes: team in-role performance and team innovation. Team inAuthors Note: Please address correspondence to Anit Somech, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel 31905; e-mail: anits@construct.haifa.ac.il.

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Directive leadership

Participative leadership

Organizational commitment

Empowerment

In-role performance

Innovation

Figure 1.

A Model of Leadership Style, Teachers Empowerment, and Organizational Commitment for Promoting School-Staff Team Effectiveness

role performance is the extent to which the team accomplishes its purpose and produces the intended, expected, or desired result (Chatman & Flynn, 2001). Team innovation is the introduction or application by a team of ideas, processes, products, or procedures that are new to the team and that are designed to be useful (West, 1990). These two dimensions of team outcomes were chosen as effectiveness variables because they tap the different dimensions of organizational effectiveness and represent the tension that schools endure when trying to engage in out-of-the-box thinking while managing routine in-role duties (Lovelace, Shapiro, & Weingart, 2001). Second, this study sought to identify the specific motivational mechanism that is stimulated by each leadership style (directive versus participative leadership). Drawing on the models of Sagie et al. (2002), who stated that it was not the leadership style per se that increases effectiveness, but rather through its triggering of motivational mechanisms, I suggest that each leadership style stimulates a distinct motivational process, which in turn promotes school-staff teams in-role performance and innovation. Based on previous research (e.g., Firestone & Pennell, 1993; Sagie et al., 2002; Short, Greer, & Melvin, 1994), two mechanisms seemed especially relevant to this study: organizational commitment and empowerment (see Figure 1). The Distinct Effects of Directive Leadership and Participative Leadership on School Effectiveness Leaders play an important role in structuring the work environment and providing information and feedback to employees. In consequence, leader

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780 Educational Administration Quarterly

behaviors have an effect on the effective reactions of team members (Durham, Knight, & Locke, 1997). However, the introduction of teams can result in a significant change to the role of leaders within organizations (Griffin, Patterson, & West, 2001). Parker and Wall (1998) identify a number of options for leading roles in teams. These options range from the complete elimination of supervisory positions to the retention of supervisory positions but with redefined role requirements. However, although leadership may have less influence on team outcomes for members working in teams, this does not mean that the supervisors leadership style has no effect on team effectiveness. Leadership is consistently recognized as important for initiation and ongoing development of teams (Bass, 1997; Manz & Sims, 1987; Tjosvold, 1995) and is often included as an important determinant in models of team outcomes (e.g., Cruz, Henningsen, & Smith, 1999; Druskat & Weeler, 2003; Griffin et al., 2001; Lovelace et al., 2001). Team leaders are responsible for their teams performance. Still, more directive leaders are expected to lead by monitoring and managing those teams, whereas participative leaders are expected to lead by encouraging team members to discover new opportunities and challenges, and to learn and to cope through sharing knowledge (Druskut & Weeler, 2003). Advocates of a directive style (e.g., Hogan et al., 1994; S. E. Murphy & Fiedler, 1992; Sagie, 1996; Sagie et al., 2002) have argued that high directiveness can help encourage school-staff teams to rise to challenging goals and achieve high rates of performance (Cropanzano, James, & Citera, 1993; Fiedler & House, 1988). These leaders promote monitoring explicit milestones, which convert school objectives into interim goals, and serve as guides for teachers (Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995; Jelinek & Schoonhoven, 1990; Wheelwright & Clark, 1992). Such predetermined standards may aid teachers to resolve unnecessary ambiguity and uncertainty, which in turn might enhance teachers in-role performance. Furthermore, highly directive leaders enhance goal attainment by serving as a source of feedback for teachers (McDonough & Barczak, 1991). Therefore, from this perspective, monitoring, evaluation, and control activities seem closely connected, interwoven within a systematic cycle, which helps teachers methodically to fulfill their roles; formal reviews foster critical assessments, which inform major decisions (e.g., continue/terminate pedagogical project, resource allocation); and directive control allows leaders to adjust school project resources and objectives as necessary (Rosenau & Moran, 1993). All these activities might contribute to increasing teachers in-role performance. In comparison, proponents of a participative style (e.g., Johnson & Ledbetter, 1993; J. Murphy & Beck, 1995; Smylie et al., 1996; West, 2002) see participative leaders as seeking to encourage teachers to discover new

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opportunities and challenges and to learn through acquiring, sharing, and combining knowledge (cf. Edmonson, 1999). The participation process helps ensure that unanticipated problems that arise during the work can be tackled directly and immediately by those affected by the problem (Durham et al., 1997). The research literature (e.g., De Dreu & West, 2001; West & Wallace, 1991) suggests that participation is critical for a teams ability to turn new ideas and individually held knowledge into innovative procedures, services, and products. Teachers in participative environments can increase the pool of ideas, materials, and methods, which will lead to a higher quality of instruction. Moreover, group problem solving among teachers encourages experimentation in innovative practices in curriculum decision making and pedagogy (Firestone & Pennell, 1993). Participative decision making, and the open communication processes that are common in this leadership style, can help lower barriers between individuals. This in turn may create an atmosphere where innovative ideas are proposed, critiqued, and refined with a minimum of social risk (West, 2002). According to the path-goal theory (House & Mitchell, 1974), members under participative leadership are likely to strive to express opinions and propose solutions because they may well reckon that the leader and their team members expect them to contribute to the task, and meeting these expectations is valuable (Kahai, Sosik, & Avolio, 1997; Peterson, 1997). A review of the team literature shows that teams with highly directive leaders achieved the highest rates of in-role performance (e.g., Cruz et al., 1999; Kahai et al., 1997; Peterson, 1997; Sagie, 1996), whereas participative leadership led to improved team innovation and team attitudes (e.g., De Dreu & West, 2001; OHara, 2001; West & Wallace, 1991). For example, Sagie (1996) examined how leadership styles affect team outcomes. Performance (percentage of correct solutions, number of questions, and length of time) and attitudes (goal commitment and satisfaction) were measured in a group problem-solving experiment with 324 college students. The results indicated the superiority of directive leadership for team performance, and the precedence of participative leadership for team attitudes. In another study, OHara (2001) examined the effects of leadership style on team innovation. Sixtyfour teams were instructed to perform some type of school/community service project, and independent judges rated these projects on two dimensions: how creative and how worthwhile. Overall, the results indicated that a more participative style produced more creative and more worthwhile projects than a directive style. Based on the above discussion, I suggest that emphasizing the directive approach reinforces behaviors of adherence to rules and procedure, and attention to details, which increase teachers in-role performance. At the same

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time, participative leadership may be a means of facilitating open discussion by encouraging exchange of creative ideas and an analytical and critical perspective, thereby fostering teachers innovation.
Hypothesis 1a: Directive leadership rather than participative leadership will be positively associated with school-staff team in-role performance. Hypothesis 1b: Participative leadership rather than directive leadership will be positively associated with school-staff team innovation.

Leaders are expected to influence their employees to be energetic and skillful in the pursuit of organizational objectives. Recent research has provided initial support for the claim that leadership does not affect employees productivity directly, but through motivational mechanisms (e.g., Durham et al., 1997; Locke & Latham, 1990). Organizational commitment is defined as the relative strength of the individuals identification with and involvement in a particular organization (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979). It has three basic components: a strong belief in and acceptance of the organizations goals and values (identification), a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization (involvement), and a strong intent or desire to remain with the organization (loyalty). Teachers empowerment is defined as a process whereby school participants develop the competence to take charge of their own growth and resolve their own problems (Short et al., 1994, p. 38). Empowerment as a motivational construct is manifested in four cognitive dimensions (meaningfulness, self-efficacy, autonomy, and impact) (Spreitzer, 1995; Thomas & Velthouse, 1990) and corresponds to an intrinsic need for self-determination (e.g., Wilson & Coolican, 1996) or a belief in individual efficacy (e.g., Short et al., 1994). With respect to directive leadership, I suggest that directive leaders enhance teachers performance through the motivational mechanism of organizational commitment. This sense of commitment may be developed through two main processes. First, directive leaders envision the achievement of the desired future by presenting value-laden goals that add greater meaning to actions oriented to their accomplishment (Jung & Avolio, 1999). These leaders increase the commitment to these goals by showing how they are consistent with school objectives and thus create a sense of evolving, which is central for a sense of commitment (Barrett, 1998). Furthermore, by linking behaviors and goals to a mission and a vision, they help teachers to see the importance of transcending their own self-interest for the sake of the mission and vision of the school. Such leaders are expected to exercise a strong positive influence on followerslevels of identification (a strong belief

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in and acceptance of the schools goals and values), which is a major component of commitment (Godard, 2001). Second, directive leaders articulate how the vision can be reached by monitoring explicit milestones, which convert school objectives into interim goals, and serve as guides for team members. Such predetermined standards may help the team to settle unnecessary ambiguity and uncertainty and to create a clear link between effort and productivity (Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995; Jelinek & Schoonhoven, 1990; Wheelwright & Clark, 1992). This link was well established by the goal-setting theory of Locke and Latham (1990), which provides consistent evidence (e.g., Drach-Zahavy & Erez, 2002) that clear and specific goals orient the individual to goal-relevant activities and materials and away from goal-irrelevant ones. This leads the individual to believe that trying for or attaining the goal is important, and to readiness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization, which represents another component of commitment. With respect to participative leadership, I suggest that participative leaders enhance teachers performance through two motivational mechanisms: organizational commitment and teachers empowerment. First, the motivational factor of commitment on the participationperformance relationship corroborates motivational theories emphasizing identification and selfcontrol as central motivational factors (Erez, 1993). Participative leaders provide teachers the opportunity to be involved in and to exert influence on decision-making processes. Their participation is believed to promote commitment to the decisions that are made and to increase willingness to carry them out in their work with students. Therefore, active participation enhances involvement and commitment, because individuals tend to place greater trust in and rise to a higher level of acceptance of information discovered by them (Armenakis et al., 1993; Beckhard & Harris, 1987; Fishbein & Azjen, 1975; Fullan, 1997). For example, Evers (1990) suggested that the success of teachers participation might lie in the sense of ownership they enjoy through the initiation of ideas, as opposed to responding to the proposals of others. Second, it is well established that perceptions of empowerment are potent motivational forces (Marks & Louis, 1997; Rinehart & Short, 1994; Spreitzer, 1996). Unlike the traditional situation, where it is the administrations exclusive responsibility to plan, control, and dictate school improvements, in the participative process teachers initiate the improvements to be undertaken and share responsibility for planning and controlling the activities that follow (Terry, 1996). Accordingly, participative leadership, which gives teachers more input into the decision-making process, enhances teachers sense of control (autonomy) on the job (Wood & Bandura, 1989) and validates their professionalism (Firestone & Pennell, 1993); these make up the foremost component of empowerment. Moreover, when teachers are actively called to

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784 Educational Administration Quarterly

participate in decision making, their participation ensures that better information will be available for making decisions that facilitate successful teaching, and this might strengthen their sense of self-efficacy and self-determination (Conley & Bacharach, 1990; Firestone & Pennell, 1993). Overall, as previous authors suggest (e.g., Edmonson, 1999), participation will satisfy human growth needs of self-determination and self-actualization and, through these mechanisms, increase motivation and performance. Therefore, I hypothesize the following:
Hypothesis 2a: Directive leadership will be positively associated with schoolstaff team organizational commitment and not with school-staff team empowerment. Hypothesis 2b: Participative leadership will be positively associated with both school-staff team organizational commitment and with school-staff team empowerment.

Finally, based on the above discussion, this study postulates an integrated model: directive leadership functions to enhance in-role performance through the mechanism of organizational commitment, whereas participative leadership functions to enhance innovation through the mechanisms of organizational commitment and empowerment.
Hypothesis 3a: School-staff team organizational commitment will mediate the directive leadershipin-role performance relationship. Hypothesis 3b: School-staff team organizational commitment and empowerment will mediate the participative leadershipinnovation relationship.

METHOD Sample and Procedure The research sample included 140 teams selected from 140 different elementary schools in northern Israel. Schools were randomly chosen from a list provided by the Ministry of Education. Preassessment interviews were conducted with the school principal, who was asked to identify interactive disciplinary work teams. Accordingly, all teams in this study were disciplinary (e.g., mathematics or science teams) and were identified as intact work teams, in that they had responsibilities and resources and depended on one another for knowledge and effort. In addition, all teams were formed by administrative assignment, had worked together for at least 1 year, and had an appointed/identified superior.

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Data were collected from 712 teachers, members of 140 teams, and their corresponding 140 immediate leaders (the heads of the teams). The average number of team members was 6.65 and SD was 6.2. There were 619 female and 93 male members of the teams altogether. The average age of the participants was 37.9 years (SD = 9.8) and the average school tenure was 9.1 years (SD = 6.8). With regard to their education, most teachers (67%) held a bachelors degree in education, 22.6% had a professional degree (equivalent to a junior college diploma, with teaching credentials), and 10.4% had a masters degree in education. These teams were supervised by 86% female leaders, with whom they had worked for at least 6 months. Their average age was 39.3 years, with average seniority of 12.8 years. Seventy-nine percent held a bachelors degree, and 21% a masters degree. These demographic characteristics were similar to those found in comparable studies on teachers and superiors in Israel (Rosenblatt & Somech, 1998; Somech & Bogler, 2002). Analyses of variance of the demographic variables confirmed no statistically significant differences across teams in gender, age, job tenure, or education. In addition, the particular discipline did not predict a significant portion of the variance in team empowerment, commitment, in-role performance, or innovation. Hence, these demographic variables were not included in subsequent analyses to test the hypotheses. Data were obtained through a survey. Response rates within teams ranged from 56% to 95% with a mean rate of 69% (SD = 15.6) for team members and 100% for leaders. The questionnaires were distributed to participants on site by a research assistant as follows: team members questionnaires covered measures of participative leadership, directive leadership, organizational commitment, and empowerment. These measures were aggregated to the team level of analysis. The data of the team leader included measures of the teams in-role performance and innovation. In addition, all participants were asked to provide demographic information. Level of Analysis The hypotheses identified the team as the unit of analysis. That is, all the study variables (leadership styles, organizational commitment, and empowerment) were aggregates of individual responses to the team level of analysis. Justification for aggregation is provided by theoretical as well as empirical arguments (Rousseau, 1985). Theoretically, Rousseau advocated the use of composition theories, which specify the functional similarities of constructs at different levels. There are many reasons to expect team members to share perceptions concerning their work environment, such as the team leadership style, and a sense of commitment and empowerment. Members

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frequent interaction, shared tasks, the clear delineation of team boundaries, and the long tenure of most of the teams should allow team members to adopt the views of the collective, thereby creating shared norms and perceptions (George, 1990; Jehn, Chadwick, & Sherry, 1997). So it was critical to demonstrate high within-team agreement to justify using the team average as an indicator of a team-level variable (rwg; James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1993). A value of .70 or above is suggested as a good amount of within-group interrater agreement (James et al., 1993). All scales exceeded this criterion. Values are given in Table 1, in the column rwg. Measures Participative/directive leadership. To assess the frequency at which a leader displayed a participative/directive leadership style, two separate scales developed by Sagie et al. (2002) were used. Participative leadership (3 items) measures the extent of involvement in various decisions (e.g., To what extent are you involved in solving problems in your team? To what extent are you involved in determining the goals and tasks of your team?) ( = .88). Directive leadership (6 items) measures the extent to which the leader provides team members with a framework for decision making and action in line with the leaders vision (e.g., Your team leader provides inspiring strategic and team goals, Your team leader has vision, often brings up ideas about possibilities for the future) ( = .93). Team members used a 5-point Likerttype scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). Organizational commitment. To measure teachers organizational commitment, I adapted Mowday et al.s (1979) Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) specifically to the school setting. This instrument includes 15 items and refers to the strength of an individuals identification with and involvement in a particular organization. Example items are, I talk about this school to my friends as a great school to work for, and I feel very little loyalty to this school (reverse coded). The reliability level of alpha was .88. The participants used a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The scale was measured by the mean response to the 15 items. Teachers empowerment. To measure teachers personal empowerment, the School Participant Empowerment Scale (SPES) of Short and Rinehart (1992) was used. The SPES measures teachers overall perception of personal empowerment. It includes six dimensions: involvement in decision making (10 items), for example, I make decisions about the implementation

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of new programs in the school; opportunities for professional growth (6 items), for example, I am treated like a professional; status (6 items), for example, I believe that I have earned respect; self-efficacy (6 items), for example, I believe that I am empowering students; autonomy (4 items), for example, I have the freedom to make decisions on what is taught; and impact (6 items), for example, I believe that I make an impact. The overall scale had reliability of .92. Personal empowerment score was obtained by the mean response to the 38 items rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Team effectiveness. To tap into the multifaceted nature of team effectiveness, team in-role performance and innovation were studied. A seven-item scale adopted from Settoon, Bennett, and Liden (1996), worded at the team level, measures team in-role performance. The items refer to an overall evaluation of the teams job performance, role fulfillment, and professional competence. Example items are, The team adequately fulfills assigned duties, The team meets formal performance requirements of the job, and The team neglects aspects of the job whose fulfillment is obligatory (reverse coded). The reliability level was .88. Team innovation was measured by a four-item scale adapted from West and Wallace (1991). The items reflect the extent to which in the previous 6 months the team had initiated changes in each of four job areas: work objectives, working methods, teaching methods, and development of skills. Example items are, The team developed innovative ways of accomplishing work targets/objectives, and The team initiated improved teaching strategies and methods. The alpha reliability level was .83. The team leader used a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), for both subscales.

RESULTS Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and intercorrelation matrix for the study variables. An examination of the intercorrelation patterns shown in Table 1 revealed several insights. First, no significant correlation was found between directive leadership and participative leadership (p > .05), indicating that these two leadership approaches were not polar extremes of the same continuum but distinct independent constructs. Second, a positive and significant correlation was found between the two motivational mechanisms, namely organizational commitment and empowerment (r = .21, p < .05), indicating relatively

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TABLE 1 Descriptive Statistics, Reliabilities, and Intercorrelation Matrix for the Studys Variables M 1. Directive leadership 2. Participative leadership 3. Organizational commitment 4. Empowerment 5. In-role performance 6. Innovation 3.49 3.91 5.31 3.82 3.78 3.69 SD .72 .35 .54 .34 .63 .67 rwg .79 .81 .77 .75 1 1.00 2 .03 1.00 3 4 5 6

.38** .06 .39** .11 .014 .40** .07 .35** 1.00 .21* 1.00 .33** .16 .09 .36** 1.00 .27** 1.00

NOTE: N = 140. All variables range from 1 to 5, except for organizational commitment, which ranges from 1 to 7; the statistic rwg represents the reliability within groups averaged across all teams (James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1993). The ranges of the reliability scores were .70 to .90 for directive leadership, .71 to .91 for participative leadership, .71 to .90 for organizational commitment, and .70 to .89 for empowerment. *p < .05. **p < .001.

independent, albeit correlated, motivational constructs. Finally, concerning the two dimensions of school effectiveness, the correlation between in-role performance and innovation was positive and significant (r = .27, p < .001). This relation indicated that although the two dimensions had common variance, each contained a unique aspect of school effectiveness. To test the study hypotheses, I conducted a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using the LISREL 8 computer program. By means of SEM, I examined the level of overall prediction of each of the measured variables suggested in the model and the exclusive, separate contribution of each variable to each dimension of school-staff teams effectiveness. This model makes possible examination of a series of simultaneous dependent relationships and of simultaneous relationships between independent and dependent variables. The overall model describes relationships between leadership styles (independent variables) and motivational mechanisms (mediating variables) and between motivational mechanisms and school-staff teams effectiveness (dependent variables). The results of the model with completely standardized path coefficients for the model are presented in Figure 2. The model showed a very strong fit with the data, 2 = 1.32, df = 5, p = .93; RMSEA = .001; SRMR = .03; GFI = 1.00; CFI = 1.00. Hypotheses 1a and 1b were related to the relationships between leadership styles (participative/directive leadership) and school-staff teams effectiveness (in-role performance/innovation). The results of the analysis (see Figure 2) revealed that directive leadership was positively and significantly related to school-staff teams in-role performance ( = .26, p < .05; R2 = .21),

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Directive leadership .39 (R2 = .17)

Participative leadership .44 (R2 = .19)

.26 (R2 = .21)

.22 Organizational commitment Empowerment

.24 (R2 = .24)

.27(R2 = .20) .02 .48 In-role performance .12

.29 (R2 = .21)

Innovation

Figure 2. Structural Equation Model of School-Staff Team Effectiveness NOTE: Dotted lines indicate nonsignificant paths.

whereas participative leadership was positively and significantly related to school-staff teams innovation ( = .24, p < .05; R2 = .24). These results supported the first two hypotheses concerning the distinct links of each leadership style with a specific effectiveness variable. Hypotheses 2a and 2b concerned the relationships between leadership style and school-staff teams motivational mechanism. A positive and significant relationship was found between directive leadership and organizational commitment ( = .39, p < .001; R2 = .17), and a positive and significant relationship was found between participative leadership and empowerment ( = .44, p < .001; R2 = .19). However, not as predicted, no significant relationship was found between participative leadership and organizational commitment. These results emphasized the distinct effects of each leadership style on a specific motivational mechanism. Finally, the third hypothesis suggested that the motivational mechanisms (organizational commitment and empowerment) would serve as a mediator in the relationship between leadership style and school-staff teams effectiveness (Hypotheses 3a and 3b). Whereas organizational commitment would serve as a mediator in the directive leadershipin-role performance relationship (Hypothesis 3a), empowerment would serve as a mediator in the participative leadershipinnovation relationship (Hypothesis 3b). Concerning the results of the link between motivational mechanism and school-staff teams effectiveness, as expected, a positive and significant relationship was found between organizational commitment and in-role performance ( = .27,

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p < .05), and a positive and significant relationship was found between empowerment and innovation ( = .29, p < .05). Accordingly, the overall results of the analysis indicated that in both cases, the direct (leadership style school-staff teams effectiveness) and indirect (leadership stylemotivational mechanismschool-staff teams effectiveness) effects were significant. Specifically, the results indicated that motivational mechanism partly mediated the relationship between leadership style and school-staff teams effectiveness.

DISCUSSION The study reported here juxtaposed the directive leadership and the participative leadership approaches in an integrated model of school effectiveness, in an attempt to improve our understating of the benefits and costs of each approach. Directive leadership aims to augment school-staff teams inrole performance via the arousal of the motivational mechanism of organizational commitment; participative leadership aims to facilitate innovation by promoting the motivational mechanism of teachers empowerment. The results of this study suggest that examining participative and directive leadership as contrasting styles at the opposite ends of a single continuum falls short of fully capturing the leadership phenomenon. These results proved the effects of participative and directive leadership on school effectiveness to be a more complex matter, namely that each leadership style promotes a distinct but potentially complementary approach to managing school-staff teams, depending on the desired school outcome. Consequently, this study offers a basis for ongoing conceptual development, by helping researchers and practitioners to move from either/or toward both/and approaches to thinking and working (Lewis et al., 2002). It thus makes several additions to our knowledge in the realm of school effectiveness. First, overall, recent educational reform movements often conclude that participative leadership is the preferred strategy for attaining school improvement. However, these results suggest that its advantage over the directive approach is not conclusive, and the effectiveness of either leadership approach depends critically on the criteria for effectiveness that are determined (Olson, Walker, & Ruekert, 1995). These results seem especially important for schools, which are typified as organizations with a loosely coupled structure, namely the activities of worker A have little effect on Bs performance, and vice versa (Greenfield, 1995; Sirotnik & Kimball, 1996; Weick, 1976). In this case, the leader faces difficulties in setting specific quantitative goals for teachers. Consequently, teachers who operate in an

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ambiguous work environment might benefit from a directive approach. This provides them with extensive planning and calculated step-by-step implementation (e.g., Zirger & Maidique, 1990), disciplined problem solving (Lewis et al., 2002), and the dissemination of best practices, such as explicit milestones, which convert school objectives into interim goals (Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995). The results of this study may suggest that the use of such directive style settles unnecessary ambiguity and uncertainty and provides guidelines for teachers in-role performance. Support for this finding might be gained from application of Mischels (1977) theory of strong/ weak situations. According to Mischel, strong situations convey strong cues for the desired behaviors, whereas weak situations do not provide clear incentive, support, or normative expectations of what behaviors are desired. At the same time, strong situations constrain the expression of personality, so behavior is more a function of the situation than of personality. But in weak situations, when environments are ambiguously structured in terms of appropriate behavior, individual predispositions are relied on to direct actions. Therefore, the directive leadership approach, by its creation of a strong situation, facilitates performance by increasing the salience of situational cues for expected behaviors and neutralizing the effect of individual differences. However, this benefit of using a directive leadership approach may incur a cost: These findings illustrated the limitation of using a directive approach in promoting innovation in school-staff teams. As mentioned, these findings indicated that strong emphasis on the participative leadership approach rather than on the directive approach was found to encourage teachers to engage more in innovative practices in curriculum decision making and pedagogy. This is important because, recently, scholars and practitioners (e.g., Andrews & Rothman, 2002; Maes, Vandenberghe, & Ghesquiere, 1999) have stressed that the educational system, like other organizations, has to be innovative to maintain and or enhance effectiveness within rapidly changing and challenging environments (De Dreu & West, 2001). These results join others (e.g., Agrell & Gustafson, 1996; Carter & West, 1998a, 1998b) in pointing out that participation is critical for a teams ability to turn new ideas and individually held knowledge into innovative procedures, services, and products. As Cohen and Levinthal (1990) noted, participation among individuals, each of whom possesses diverse and different knowledge, will augment the organizations capacity for making novel linkages and associations beyond what any individual can achieve. Thus, innovation needs the absorptive capacity to recognize, assimilate, and apply the creative ideas. The absorptive capacity will be higher when team members participate in decision making. Participation stimulates the exchange and integration of information (Stasser & Titus, 1987), reduces resistance to

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792 Educational Administration Quarterly

change, and facilitates team members commitment to team decisions (Louis & Smith, 1992). Second, the value of this study is in improving the understanding of the motivational mechanisms that might explain how each leadership approach is related to school effectiveness. With regard to the directive leadership approach, these results, as expected, indicated that directive leadership was associated with school-staff team in-role performance directly, but also indirectly through organizational commitment. These results reinforce recent work (e.g., Sagie et al., 2002) suggesting that many of the performance benefits of directive leadership are motivational in nature. That is, one important role for a directive leader is to help the team to approach the task more effectively by ensuring that there is a high level of commitment among teachers to their schools objectives. As leaders link teachers behaviors and goals to a mission and vision, and articulate how the vision can be reached through monitoring explicit milestones, they help teachers to see the importance of transcending their own self-interest for the sake of the schools mission. Therefore, such leaders have a strong positive influence on teacherslevels of identification, which in turn fosters teachers willingness to exert extra efforts to accomplish school goals (Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995). With regard to the participative leadership approach, these findings showed that, inconsistent with previous research (e.g., Wu & Short, 1996), organizational commitment was not associated with the participative approach and therefore did not function as mediator in the participative leadership innovation relationship. However, as expected, participative leadership was associated with school-staff team innovation directly, but also indirectly through teachers empowerment, which served as a motivational mechanism that mediated the participative approachinnovation relationship. These results suggest that inviting teachers to join in the decision-making process enhances teachers opportunities to develop a sense of self-efficacy and selfdetermination (Conley & Bacharach, 1990; Firestone & Pennell, 1993; White, 1992). This in turn strengthens their belief in their own effectiveness, which might affect whether they engage in out-of-the-box thinking, try to discover new opportunities and challenges, or are motivated to turn new ideas and individually held knowledge into innovative procedures, services, and products (De Dreu & West, 2001). Our results support previous research that advocated that to improve teachers innovativeness, as professionals they need to be recognized as experts in their fields, have a sense of authority about what they do and how they do it, and feel that they are engaged in meaningful work and are respected by others. These results are consistent with the repeated claim in the literature (e.g., Blase & Blase, 1996; Short & Greer, 1997; Short et al., 1994) that teachers empowerment aims to promote school

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effectiveness by promoting fulfillment of human growth needs of selfactualization. Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research Although these findings are encouraging for school effectiveness research, this study was limited by its mode of operation. First, the data were largely self-reported and hence subject to bias. In this, the study was no different from previous investigations (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; Lovelace et al., 2001). Recent research suggests that self-reported data are not as limited as was previously believed and that people often accurately perceive their social environment (Alper, Tjosvold, & Law, 1998). Moreover, with regard to leadership style, Yukl (1994) suggested that in contrast to most research, which concerned leaders perceptions in their description of the behaviors that they themselves used, the study of subordinates perceptions of the leaders behavior may be most useful in examining linkages between organizational variables and leadership styles. Moreover, in this study, the likelihood of common method variance was low because the criterion variables (in-role performance and innovation) were obtained from different sources (heads of the teams) (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). At the same time, I do not have data to show that these perceptual measures of team performance are predictors of objective measures of performance. Further research should use other sources for evaluating team performance (Lovelace et al., 2001). A second limitation of the study involves its ability to predict causal relationships. Because the data were cross-sectional, we know that there were associations between the variables in the study, but we cant conclude that the relationships were causal. In many cases, the relationships were likely to be reciprocally causal over time, for example, the relationship between teams innovation and teachers empowerment. Moreover, the study did not examine competing models but tested a single model. Therefore, it might be possible to formulate other models that would fit as well as or better than the proposed model. Nevertheless, as our starting point was a theoretical framework, experimentally examined in previous studies, our causal inferences do seem the most logical. Further research in more controlled settings is needed before causal inference concerning the relationships that were observed in this study can be made with more certainty (Lovelace et al., 2001). Finally, in this study, both organizational commitment and empowerment were treated as global constructs. However, one might suggest that each leadership is distinctively more related to certain dimensions of these constructs than to others. For example, although no relationship was found between directive leadership and the global construct of empowerment, this leader-

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794 Educational Administration Quarterly

ship style is perhaps not related to the dimensions involvement in decision making or autonomy but is positively related to professional growth. Further studies should examine if specific dimensions of each construct have distinctive relationships with leadership styles. Moreover, although teachers organizational commitment and empowerment proved significant motivational mechanisms among school-staff teams, recent work has suggested that both the participation and the direction approaches can have cognitive effects (e.g., Durham et al., 1997). Further studies should examine the effect of leadership style on cognitive processes, such as internal and external communication, in an attempt to extend our understanding of how to manage schoolstaff teams to use their benefits.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS As the educational system environment becomes more dynamic and competitive, leaders face new challenges such as meeting persistent demands for school innovation and better in-role performance. This conceptual framework juxtaposed the directive and participative leadership approaches to accentuate their differences. Yet, rather than depicting these styles as mutually exclusive, the results of this study suggest that each promotes a distinct, but potentially complementary, approach to enhance school effectiveness. The results provide important evidence that the distinct demands for in-role performance and innovation require a more flexible and elaborate repertoire of activities (Lewis et al., 2002; Quinn, 1988). It is suggested that principals might combine directive and participative behaviors concurrently to enhance school effectiveness. Managing tensions between directive and participative activities, bottom-up and top-down processes, and flexibility and discipline may provide a key to teachers high performance. This both/and approach joins the recent call (e.g., Lewis et al., 2002; Sagie et al., 2002) to reconsider authors sweeping recommendation (e.g., Maeroff, 1988; Short & Greer, 1997) to prefer participation to the directive leadership style. The findings also call leaders to invest in enhancing teachers motivational mechanisms rather than focusing only on the bottom line of the outcomes. The results suggest that school effectiveness could be managed by fostering intrinsic task motivation among teachers, as well as by promoting teachers organizational commitment. Leaders need to recognize that the feeling that teachers have about their schools may be manifested through their in-role performance (Firestone & Pennell, 1993), whereas a sense of self-determination and self-efficacy may be translated into high levels of

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innovation (West, 2002). Therefore, our findings emphasize the importance of shaping organizational conditions under which teachers work to enhance teachers motivation, which in turn will affect school effectiveness.

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Anit Somech earned her Ph.D. in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion, the Israel Institute for Technology. She is the head of the Educational Administration Department at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her current research interests include participative leadership, team work, and organizational citizenship behavior at the individual, team, and organizational levels.

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