Leadership Perceptions and its Impact on Teachers' Work Behaviour

Leadership behaviour and effectiveness are influenced by how leadership is perceived by other social players, for example peers, superiors, followers or subordinates. The aim of the present study was to find perceptions of teachers about their department heads. 120 University teachers were selected randomly from a university in Delhi. Out which 40 teachers were selected each from social science, Basic Science and professional science courses. The Multi factor Leadership Questionnaire, Work Motivation and Organizational Commitment questionnaire were administered for measuring the perceived leadership style, work motivation and organizational Commitment of University teachers. The socio demographic information of participants was also collected. The results revealed that the university teachers perceived their heads' behaviour to be more oriented towards transformational leadership. The teachers of professional science courses perceive their heads as transformational leaders, in comparison to social science and basic science teachers. The perceived leadership style was found correlated significantly positively with the work motivation but not with organizational commitment. Leadership perceptions were found to influence work motivation more in comparison to organisational commitment.