Proceedings of The 7th International Conference on Future of Teaching and Education
Year: 2023
DOI:
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Understanding the Precedents and Consequences of Cynical Attitudes in The School Environment
Dr. Burçak Çağla Garipağaoğlu, Dr. Berna Güloğlu
ABSTRACT:
Even though the root cause for a cynical attitude toward organizations is said to be the perceived lack of virtue and sincerity in the motives of organizations, it is still necessary to scrutinize under what conditions cynical attitude is more likely to escalate and what the consequences of such attitudes are for organizations. Since there is only a limited number of studies examining the causal relationship between the antecedents and consequences of organizational cynicism specifically in the field of education, this study conducted with teachers aims to fill this gap in the field and provide recommendations for practitioners and researchers. More specifically, this study aimed to help school leaders acknowledge the potential antecedents and consequences of organizational cynicism in the school environment. The data of this study were collected from 354 teachers working at primary, lower secondary and upper secondary schools in Turkey. The sample of the study was selected by convenient sampling method. As an attempt to test the proposed model, the relationship among organizational hypocrisy, organizational cynicism, organizational silence and organizational citizenship were investigated. An analysis of proposed model generated a good fit: χ2 (72) = 195.491, p = .000; χ2 /df = 2.715; GFI = .928, CFI = .964; TLI = .954; RMSEA = .070. The indirect effects in the model revealed that the effect of organizational hypocrisy on organizational silence (β=.699, SH= .086, t = 8.091) and organizational citizenship (β=-.191, SH= .030, t = -6.404) were significant. Finally, it was found that the model explained 19% of variance in organization silence, 15% of variance in organization citizenship. By drawing attention to productive and counter-productive work behaviors that have an essential role in the ability of organizations to cope with the uncertainty, the model suggests why employees develop a cynical attitude about the workplace; and how the school leaders can mitigate the employee cynicism that hinder the ability of organizations to accommodate today’s much needed organizational change.
keywords: Organizational cynicism, Organizational hypocrisy, Organizational silence, Organizational citizenship