Abstract:

Background. Organization and administration theorists have started to take more attention to power in terms of organization and administration (Morgan, 2006; Pfeffer, 1992; Schermerhorn, Hunt and Osborn, 2000).The assessment of power style choices regarding job satisfaction, education, age and sex (Karaman, 1999), the research of which power source is effective in the specific levels, the determination of which power sources are used by the administrators and also the detection of the employees' reactions to these power sources (Kırel, 1998), the assessment of division and department chairs both themselves and the instructors according to the power styles they choose in the administration process (Özaslan, 2006), the researches on the determination of the employees' behaviours according to the power styles in the various service sectors (Munduate and Dorado, 1998) can be regarded as sample researches in this field. In this respect, power can be regarded as a significant factor on the relationship between the administrators and employees (Ward, 1998). Although there are some studies such as leadership and organizational culture (Balekoğlu, 1992; Benda, 2000; Miller, 2001; Reeves, 2006), the effect of organizational culture on organizational structure (Neumann, 1997; Uğuz, 1999), organizational culture in private and state secondary schools (Terzi, 1999), the determination of cultural structure in primary schools (Terzi, 2005), the importance of organizational culture in the development of organization (Özsoy, 2005), the relationship between organizational culture and organizational performance (Lim, 1995), it can be said that there are not adequate researches on the relationship between organizational culture and school administrators' power styles. In this context, it is thought that this study can offer significant contributions to literature by revealing out the explanatory and predictive relationships between power styles used by primary school administrators and organizational culture dimensions. Purpose. The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the power styles used by primary school administrators and the school culture according to the primary school teachers' perceptions. Method.This study is a descriptive research with a survey model. The sample of this study is 424 teachers who work in state primary schools in the central districts of Ankara. The “Power Style Scale”, developed by Koşar (2008) and “Organizational Culture Scale” developed by Terzi (2005) were used to gather data in this study. In the analysis of data, Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and Multiple Linear Regression analyses were used. The predictor variables of this research are the power styles (personality power, reward power, legitimate power, coercive power), whereas criterion variable is organizational culture (support culture, success culture, bureaucratic culture, task culture). Findings and Conclusion. Results demonstrated that there is a significant positive correlation between the personality power style of the school administrators and reward power. In the light of this result, it can be said that school administrators should have personality power style. It can also be said that using the desirable power sources on teachers cause a positive effect on their accordance to school. In other words, at schools in which personality and reward power styles are dominant, more positive atmosphere is found and at schools in which legitimate and coercive power styles are dominant, less positive atmosphere is found.There is a positive correlation between support culture, success culture, task culture and personality and reward power styles whereas there is a negative correlation with coercive power style. Moreover, bureaucratic culture is positively correlated with legitimate and coercive power styles. It is determined that both legitimate and coercive power styles are significant predictors on bureaucratic culture.The school administrators that aim their schools to focus on success should use personality and reward power styles effectively. If the school administrators choose their schools to focus on task, they should use personality, reward and legitimate power styles. However, when contingency approach is taken into consideration, it is not right to present a power formula that is acceptable in every situation. Instead of presenting a power formula that is acceptable in every situation, it is necessary to synthesize power styles that are suitable to different situations. This crosssectional research is handled in descriptive survey method. For this reason, longitudinal researches should be done in a long period of time. In this study quantitative results were found. Similar studies should be done using qualitative method such as interview, observation, discussion in different institutions and private schools.

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