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Supportive and demanding managerial circumstances and associations with excellent workability: a cross-sectional study of Swedish school principals

BACKGROUND: The leadership of principals is important for school, teacher and student related outcomes. To be capable of doing their work (i.e., having sufficient workability), school principals need proper organisational preconditions, motivation, and good health. It is therefore concerning that so...

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Autores principales: Persson, Roger, Leo, Ulf, Arvidsson, Inger, Nilsson, Kerstin, Österberg, Kai, Håkansson, Carita
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8295455/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34294161
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00608-4
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author Persson, Roger
Leo, Ulf
Arvidsson, Inger
Nilsson, Kerstin
Österberg, Kai
Håkansson, Carita
author_facet Persson, Roger
Leo, Ulf
Arvidsson, Inger
Nilsson, Kerstin
Österberg, Kai
Håkansson, Carita
author_sort Persson, Roger
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The leadership of principals is important for school, teacher and student related outcomes. To be capable of doing their work (i.e., having sufficient workability), school principals need proper organisational preconditions, motivation, and good health. It is therefore concerning that some studies suggest that principals have a work situation that risks taxing their health and reducing their workability. However, few studies have examined the psychosocial working conditions of principals and no study has gauged principals’ workability. Accordingly, we decided to examine Swedish principals’ workability and their perceptions of eight demanding and five supportive managerial circumstances as well as the associations between managerial circumstances and reports of excellent workability. METHODS: The participants comprised 2219 Swedish principals (78% women) who completed a cross-sectional web survey in 2018. A brief version of the Gothenburg Manager Stress Inventory (GMSI-Mini) gauged managerial circumstances. Workability was assessed with the workability score (0–10; WAS). Unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression analyses were used to examine associations between managerial circumstances and reports of excellent workability (WAS ≥ 9). Covariates were: length of work experience as a principal, school level, self-rated health, and general self-efficacy. RESULTS: The results showed that circa 30% of the principals reported excellent workability. The GMSI-Mini results showed that role conflicts, resource deficits, and having to harbour co-workers’ frustrations were the most frequently encountered managerial demands. Meanwhile, cooperating co-workers, supportive manager colleagues, and a supportive private life were the most supportive managerial circumstances. Adjusted logistic regression analyses showed that role conflicts and role demands were associated with an increased likelihood of reporting less than excellent workability. In contrast, supportive managerial colleagues, a supportive private life and supportive organisational structures were associated with an increased likelihood of reporting excellent workability. CONCLUSION: Circa 30% of the participating principals perceived their workability to be excellent. Reducing role demands, clarifying the principals’ areas of responsibility and accountability in relation to other actors in the governing chain (role conflicts), striving for increased role clarity, and striving to find ways to separate work and private life, seem to be promising intervention areas if increasing principals’ workability is desired. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-021-00608-4.
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spelling pubmed-82954552021-07-22 Supportive and demanding managerial circumstances and associations with excellent workability: a cross-sectional study of Swedish school principals Persson, Roger Leo, Ulf Arvidsson, Inger Nilsson, Kerstin Österberg, Kai Håkansson, Carita BMC Psychol Research BACKGROUND: The leadership of principals is important for school, teacher and student related outcomes. To be capable of doing their work (i.e., having sufficient workability), school principals need proper organisational preconditions, motivation, and good health. It is therefore concerning that some studies suggest that principals have a work situation that risks taxing their health and reducing their workability. However, few studies have examined the psychosocial working conditions of principals and no study has gauged principals’ workability. Accordingly, we decided to examine Swedish principals’ workability and their perceptions of eight demanding and five supportive managerial circumstances as well as the associations between managerial circumstances and reports of excellent workability. METHODS: The participants comprised 2219 Swedish principals (78% women) who completed a cross-sectional web survey in 2018. A brief version of the Gothenburg Manager Stress Inventory (GMSI-Mini) gauged managerial circumstances. Workability was assessed with the workability score (0–10; WAS). Unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression analyses were used to examine associations between managerial circumstances and reports of excellent workability (WAS ≥ 9). Covariates were: length of work experience as a principal, school level, self-rated health, and general self-efficacy. RESULTS: The results showed that circa 30% of the principals reported excellent workability. The GMSI-Mini results showed that role conflicts, resource deficits, and having to harbour co-workers’ frustrations were the most frequently encountered managerial demands. Meanwhile, cooperating co-workers, supportive manager colleagues, and a supportive private life were the most supportive managerial circumstances. Adjusted logistic regression analyses showed that role conflicts and role demands were associated with an increased likelihood of reporting less than excellent workability. In contrast, supportive managerial colleagues, a supportive private life and supportive organisational structures were associated with an increased likelihood of reporting excellent workability. CONCLUSION: Circa 30% of the participating principals perceived their workability to be excellent. Reducing role demands, clarifying the principals’ areas of responsibility and accountability in relation to other actors in the governing chain (role conflicts), striving for increased role clarity, and striving to find ways to separate work and private life, seem to be promising intervention areas if increasing principals’ workability is desired. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-021-00608-4. BioMed Central 2021-07-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8295455/ /pubmed/34294161 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00608-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Persson, Roger
Leo, Ulf
Arvidsson, Inger
Nilsson, Kerstin
Österberg, Kai
Håkansson, Carita
Supportive and demanding managerial circumstances and associations with excellent workability: a cross-sectional study of Swedish school principals
title Supportive and demanding managerial circumstances and associations with excellent workability: a cross-sectional study of Swedish school principals
title_full Supportive and demanding managerial circumstances and associations with excellent workability: a cross-sectional study of Swedish school principals
title_fullStr Supportive and demanding managerial circumstances and associations with excellent workability: a cross-sectional study of Swedish school principals
title_full_unstemmed Supportive and demanding managerial circumstances and associations with excellent workability: a cross-sectional study of Swedish school principals
title_short Supportive and demanding managerial circumstances and associations with excellent workability: a cross-sectional study of Swedish school principals
title_sort supportive and demanding managerial circumstances and associations with excellent workability: a cross-sectional study of swedish school principals
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8295455/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34294161
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00608-4
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