Principal Leadership Enhancement: Personality Traits or Organizational Environment？

doi:10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2025.06.007

Abstract

Abstract:

Endogenous subject formation and exogenous environment shaping are usually regarded as the main pathways to the formation of principal leadership, but no empirical research has been conducted to explore the relative importance of the two on the enhancement of principal leadership. A questionnaire survey was conducted among a group of primary and secondary school principals to investigate the effects of personality traits and organizational environment on principal leadership. The study found that personality traits were the dominant force in principal leadership enhancement, while the influence of environment was less than thirty percent (23.95%). In other words, whether or not principal leadership is improved “depends on the struggle”, while extroversion, openness, sense of responsibility and sense of support from superiors have a positive impact on principal leadership. Also, autonomy of school running has a “too little too late effect” on the development of principal leadership, showing a “shifting inflection point effect”. The influence of superior support on the leadership of principals is in the form of “sending charcoal in snowy weather”, which has a higher marginal effect on growth-oriented principals than that of expert principals. In addition, the development of the trait of sense of responsibility enables principals to “raise the low and expand the middle”. The development of the trait of sense of responsibility helps principals to realize “raising the low and expanding the middle”, effectively narrowing the group differences in the leadership development of principals. Finally, trengthening the trait of extroversion and openness has an “icing on the cake” effect on the leadership of principals, promoting the expert principals to form a “superposition effect of advantages”, helping them to develop towards excellence.Based on this, it is recommended that we optimize the selection criteria for principals, design supportive programs, and ensure a dynamic balance between “decentralization” and “control” in order to promote the enhancement of principal leadership.

Key words: principal leadership, personality traits, school autonomy, sense of support from superiors

Lili Liu, Qinghao Li, Hongying Bao. Principal Leadership Enhancement: Personality Traits or Organizational Environment？[J]. Journal of East China Normal University(Educationa, 2025, 43(6): 99-115.

Figures/Tables 11

References

	蔡茹, 张新平, 姚继军, 周世科. (2024). 校长积极领导力何以重要?——论其在学校背景与学生成绩之间的中介效应. 华东师范大学学报(教育科学版), (02), 92- 108.
	陈东平. (2008). 以中国文化为视角的霍夫斯泰德跨文化研究及其评价. 江淮论坛, (01), 123- 127.
	程钰琳, 张万朋. (2017). 国际视域下初中校长分布式领导的表现及影响因素——基于TALIS 2013数据的实证分析. 当代教育论坛, (06), 48- 60.
	杜玲毓, 孙健敏, 尹奎 & 彭坚. (2017). 变革型领导从何而来?变革型领导的形成机理. 中国人力资源开发, (11), 87- 97.
	冯大鸣. (2018). 我国义务教育学校办学自主权的实证分析. 中国教育学刊, (10), 55- 60.
	甘韵文. (2019). 教育行政力量何以制约中学校长领导力的提升.南京: 南京师范大学硕士学位论文.
	高婧, 胡中锋. (2016). 教师教学效能感与校长教学领导力的相关有多大?. 中小学管理, (05), 49- 52.
	胡天助. (2022). 成功的校长领导力: 领导模式及其特征——以ISSPP为例. 外国教育研究, (09), 64- 83.
	黄声华, 尹弘飚. (2024). 青少年社会情感能力发展现状及其相关因素研究: 学生减负之后的“加法”问题初探. 中国人民大学教育学刊, (03), 96- 109+182.
	雷万鹏, 马丽. (2019). 赋权与增能: 中小学校长课程领导力提升路径. 教育研究与实验, (03), 68- 72.
	李剑萍, 张涛. (2006). 山东省普通高中校长领导行为的调查研究. 当代教育科学, (16), 14- 19.
	李玲, 王建平 , 何怀金. (2016). 学校分布式领导与教师变革承诺的关系研究. 教育学报, (06), 40- 52.
	李小土, 刘明兴, 安雪慧. (2008). 西部农村教育财政改革与人事权力结构变迁. 北京大学教育评论, (04), 62- 77+189—190.
	刘莉莉, 孔曼. (2020). 变革型领导力与教师组织承诺的关系研究——教师自我效能感的中介效应分析. 华东师范大学学报(教育科学版), (07), 97- 105.
	刘莉莉, 李晓华. (2021). 卓越校长工作人格特质对其胜任力的影响实证研究——上级支持感的中介作用. 全球教育展望, (12), 77- 89.
	刘莉莉. (2024). 名校长成“名”的底层逻辑及价值旨归. 中小学管理, (01), 27- 30.
	芦青, 宋继文, 夏长虹. (2011). 道德领导的影响过程分析: 一个社会交换的视角. 管理学报, (12), 1802- 1812.
	马丽, 牛君霞, 唐海康. (2020). 校长自我效能感、学习投入、办学自主权对校长领导力的影响——基于5省15市的实证调查. 教育与教学研究, (11), 86- 98.
	蒲蕊. (2019). 新中国基础教育管理体制70年: 历程、经验与展望. 中国教育学刊, (10), 48- 53.
	施久铭. (2019). 校长的品格、人格决定一所学校的气质——访江苏省苏州市吴江区盛泽实验小学教育集团总校长薛法根. 人民教育, (12), 41- 46.
	唐京, 程正方, 应小平. (1999). 校长领导行为与校长类型. 心理学探新, (03), 43- 46+58.
	王凤佐. (2004). 员工对上级的社会支持的感知及对其工作压力感的影响.大连: 大连理工大学硕士学位论文.
	王淑华, 王以宁. (2021). 人格特质与校长信息化领导力的关系: 组织氛围的中介效应. 现代远距离教育, (01), 89- 96.
	姚计海, 黄心怡, 吴小益. (2023). 领导支持对校长职业倦怠的影响: 心理授权和上级满意度的中介作用. 心理学探新, (05), 455- 462.
	袁玉婷, 汪雅霜. (2024). 出国留学对博士生能力发展的影响——基于Nature全球调查数据的分析. 重庆高教研究, (03), 97- 110.
	张佳, 顾建民. (2022). 校长轮岗对义务教育学校发展有影响吗?. 全球教育展望, (02), 77- 92.
	张佳, 傅锐杰, 邵兴江. (2021). 轮岗对校长领导力提升存在“黄金频次”效应——基于对校长多维领导力发展的实证调查. 基础教育, (05), 39- 50.
	Ausubel, D. P., & Robinson, F. G. (1969). School learning: An introduction to educational psychology. Holt, Rinehart Winston.
	Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological review, 84 (2), 191.
	Barrick, M. R., Mount, M. K., & Judge, T. A. (2001). Personality and performance at the beginning of the new millennium: What do we know and where do we go next?. International Journal of Selection and assessment, 9 (1‐2), 9- 30.
	Bossert, S. T., Dwyer, D. C., Rowan, B., & Lee, G. V. (1982). The instructional management role of the principal. Educational administration quarterly, 18 (3), 34- 64.
	Bishop, J. H., & Wößmann, L. (2004). Institutional effects in a simple model of educational production. Education Economics, 12 (1), 17- 38.
	Braun, A., Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Hoskins, K. (2011). Taking context seriously: Towards explaining policy enactments in the secondary school. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 32 (4), 585- 596.
	Cheng, Y. C., & Walker, A. (2008). When reform hits reality: The bottleneck effect in Hong Kong primary schools. School Leadership and Management, 28 (5), 505- 521.
	Clarke, S., & O’donoghue, T. (2017). Educational leadership and context: A rendering of an inseparable relationship. British journal of educational studies, 65 (2), 167- 182.
	Day, C., Sammons, P., Leithwood, K., Hopkins, D., Gu, Q., Brown, E. J., & Ahtaridou, E. (2011). School leadership and student outcomes: Building and sustaining success. McGraw-Hill Education.
	Derue, D. S., Nahrgang, J. D., Wellman, N. E., & Humphrey, S. E. (2011). Trait and behavioral theories of leadership: An integration and meta‐analytic test of their relative validity. Personnel psychology, 64 (1), 7- 52.
	Finnigan, K. S. (2007). Charter school autonomy: The mismatch between theory and practice. Educational Policy, 21 (3), 503- 526.
	Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of marketing research, 18 (1), 39- 50.
	Hallinger, P. (2018). Bringing context out of the shadows of leadership. Educational management administration & leadership, 46 (1), 5- 24.
	Israeli, O. (2007). A Shapley-based decomposition of the R-square of a linear regression. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 5, 199- 212.
	Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87 (4), 765- 780.
	Kirkpatick, S. A., & Locke, E. A. (1991). Leadership: do traits matter?. Academy of management perspectives, 5 (2), 48- 60.
	Kite, M. E. (1996). Age, gender, and occupational label: A test of social role theory. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 20 (3), 361- 374.
	Koenker, R., & Bassett Jr, G. (1978). Regression quantiles. Econometrica: journal of the Econometric Society, 33—50.
	Lakomski, G., & Evers, C. W. (2022). The importance of context for leadership in education. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 50 (2), 269- 284.
	Lazaridou, A. (2021), Personality and resilience characteristics of preschool principals: an iterative study, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT, 35 (1) , pp. 29—46.
	Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2008). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership. School leadership and management, 28 (1), 27- 42.
	MacBeath, J. (2005), "Leadership as distributed: a matter of practice", SchoolLeadership and Management, Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 349—366.
	Meng, Y., Yu, B., Li, C., & Lan, Y. (2021). Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the organization big five scale. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 781369.
	Nicolaidou, M., & Petridou, A. (2011). Evaluation of CPD programmes: challenges and implications for leader and leadership development. School effectiveness and school improvement, 22 (1), 51- 85.
	Noman, M., Awang Hashim, R., & Shaik Abdullah, S. (2018). Contextual leadership practices: The case of a successful school principal in Malaysia. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 46 (3), 474- 490.
	Owens, R. G. (2004). Organizational behavior in education: Adaptive leadership and school reform Boston. Massachusetts: Pearson.
	Peterson, R. S., Smith, D. B., Martorana, P. V., & Owens, P. D. (2003). The impact of chief executive officer personality on top management team dynamics: one mechanism by which leadership affects organizational performance. Journal of applied Psychology, 88 (5), 795.
	Pfeffer, J., & Salancik, G. (2015). External control of organizations—Resource dependence perspective. In Organizational behavior 2 (pp. 355-370). Routledge.
	Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive science, 12 (2), 257- 285.
	Yang, F., Liu, J., Huang, X., Qian, J., Wang, T., Wang, Z., & Yu, H. (2018). How supervisory support for career development relates to subordinate work engagement and career outcomes: The moderating role of task proficiency. Human Resource Management Journal, 28 (3), 496- 509.
	Yin, H., & Zheng, X. (2018). Facilitating professional learning communities in China: Do leadership practices and faculty trust matter?. Teaching and Teacher Education, 76, 140- 150.

	变量	操作化定义	均值	标准差
自变量	上级支持感	采用李克特五级量表分数越高，表示校长对于组织环境的感知越显著	3.864	0.734
	办学自主权	采用李克特五级量表分数越高，表示校长对于组织环境的感知越显著	3.692	0.750
	外向性特质	采用李克特五级量表分数越高，表明校长相应人格特质表现越明显	3.935	0.723
	开放性特质		4.022	0.723
	责任感特质		3.970	0.732
因变量	校长领导力	树立愿景、发展教师、重构组织和教学管理 4个分维度分值加总取均值	4.059	0.656
因变量子维度	树立愿景	采用李克特五级量表分数越高，表明校长在该维度的领导力表现越好	3.863	0.783
	发展教师		4.217	0.732
	重构组织		4.008	0.708
	教学管理		4.149	0.750
控制变量		性别：男性赋值为1，女性赋值为2	1.370	——
		年龄：分别赋值-30岁以下赋值为1；31—40岁赋值为2；41—50岁赋值为3； 50岁以上赋值为4	3.120	——
		受教育水平：分别赋值-大专及以下赋值为1；本科赋值为2；硕士赋值为3；博士赋值为4	2.018	——
		学段：分别赋值-小学赋值为1；初中赋值为2；九年一贯制赋值为3；高中赋值为4；完全中学赋值为5	2.053	——
		学校位置：分别赋值-市区赋值为1；县城赋值为2；乡镇赋值为3；农村赋值为4	1.953	——
		名校长工作室情况：分别赋值-名校长工作室成员赋值为1；名校长工作室主持人赋值为2；未加入名校长工作室赋值为3	2.510	——

变量	题目信度STD	多元相关平方SMC	组合信度CR值	平均方差萃取AVE	内部一致性系数
校长领导力	0.742-0.907	0.550-0.823	0.955	0.590	0.968
上级支持感	0.906-0.924	0.529-0.776	0.928	0.682	0.926
学校自主权	0.833-0.942	0.465-0.792	0.794	0.567	0.896
外向性特质	0.774-0.832	0.633-0.793	0.869	0.689	0.865
开放性特质	0.808-0.881	0.603-0.812	0.888	0.726	0.886
责任感特质	0.721-0.846	0.491-0.816	0.851	0.657	0.842

自变量	模型（1）	模型（2）	模型（3）	模型（4）	模型（5）	模型（6）	模型（7）	模型（8）
自变量	校长领导力	校长领导力	校长领导力	校长领导力	树立愿景	教学管理	发展教师	重构组织
控制变量
性别	0.089	0.108***	0.099***		0.036	0.177***	0.161***	0.022
性别	(0.059)	(0.038)	(0.037)		(0.064)	(0.051)	(0.046)	(0.040)
年龄	0.056	0.061***	0.058***		0.012	0.095***	0.069**	0.055**
年龄	(0.034)	(0.022)	(0.022)		(0.034)	(0.032)	(0.028)	(0.022)
受教育水平	0.155***	0.017	0.009		0.015	0.042	−0.000	−0.019
受教育水平	(0.056)	(0.045)	(0.045)		(0.079)	(0.071)	(0.051)	(0.045)
学段	0.051**	0.012	0.006		0.011	−0.005	0.020	−0.002
学段	(0.022)	(0.014)	(0.013)		(0.025)	(0.017)	(0.017)	(0.015)
名校长工作室	−0.108***	−0.002	−0.007		0.004	0.010	−0.020	−0.020
名校长工作室	(0.031)	(0.022)	(0.021)		(0.036)	(0.032)	(0.024)	(0.020)
学校位置	−0.072**	−0.030*	−0.029*		−0.053*	−0.056**	−0.016	0.009
学校位置	(0.031)	(0.018)	(0.017)		(0.030)	(0.024)	(0.022)	(0.018)
个性特质
外向性特质		0.129***	0.096**	0.091**	0.073	0.079	0.087*	0.145***
外向性特质		(0.043)	(0.039)	(0.040)	(0.064)	(0.055)	(0.045)	(0.045)
开放性特质		0.252***	0.212***	0.212***	0.181**	0.247***	0.256***	0.165***
开放性特质		(0.053)	(0.049)	(0.050)	(0.074)	(0.068)	(0.061)	(0.059)
责任感特质		0.360***	0.314***	0.328***	0.339***	0.287***	0.306***	0.322***
责任感特质		(0.050)	(0.050)	(0.050)	(0.078)	(0.061)	(0.058)	(0.057)
组织环境
上级支持感			0.222***	0.221***	0.162***	0.216***	0.235***	0.275***
上级支持感			(0.041)	(0.042)	(0.055)	(0.049)	(0.046)	(0.045)
学校自主权			0.457**	0.514***	0.758**	0.729***	0.340	0.002
学校自主权			(0.186)	(0.187)	(0.346)	(0.277)	(0.257)	(0.170)
学校自主权平方			−0.071***	−0.078***	−0.114**	−0.113***	−0.056	0.001
学校自主权平方			(0.026)	(0.026)	(0.048)	(0.039)	(0.035)	(0.022)
常数项	3.759***	0.776***	−0.231	−0.097	−0.346	−0.736	−0.125	0.283
常数项	(0.230)	(0.218)	(0.377)	(0.344)	(0.685)	(0.574)	(0.509)	(0.363)
观测值	552	552	552	552	552	552	552	552
$ {R}^{2} $	0.077	0.635	0.674	0.662	0.381	0.500	0.595	0.712
F检验	7.598***	276.570***	26.808***	——

变量		校长领导力
变量		Shapley值	Shapley值分解贡献率	位次	Owen值分解群组贡献率
个性特质	外向性特质	0.104	15.42%	4	71.19%
	开放性特质	0.174	25.88%	2
	责任感特质	0.201	29.89%	1
组织环境	上级支持感	0.139	20.62%	3	23.95%
组织环境	学校自主权	0.014	3.33%	5	23.95%
个体特征控制变量	性别	0.008	1.13%	4.86%
	年龄	0.008	1.21%
	受教育水平	0.002	0.30%
	学段	0.001	0.21%
	名校长工作室情况	0.004	0.55%
	学校位置	0.010	1.46%

[1]	Jing Zhang. IQ or EQ: Which is More Important for Students’ Learning ? [J]. Journal of East China Normal University(Educational Sciences), 2022, 40(11): 69-79.
[2]	Zhan Zhongle, Jin Lantao. Retrospect and Prospect of Educational Administrative Disputes and Their Resolution in China—Taking “Top Ten Administrative Disputes in Promoting the Rule of Law in Education” as Examples [J]. Journal of East China Normal University(Educational Sciences), 2020, 38(2): 1-18.