Change Management Strategies And Leadership Styles Of School Administrators: Their Effect On The Teachers’ Organizational Commitment

The phenomenon of change is a continuous and inherent aspect of nature. The adoption of a particular practice has become a habitual pattern for both an entity, its workforce, and its leadership. This study was conducted to examine the effect of change management strategies and leadership styles of school administrators on the organizational commitment of teachers. Descriptive survey design was utilized to provide appropriate analysis, and interpretation of results. Survey questionnaires were administered to a total of 401 respondents. The school administrators’ change management strategies an d leadership styles mean scores were obtained by administering three (3) sets of questionnaires: School Administrator (AQ) version, Teacher (TQ) version, and Stakeholders (SQ) version. Teachers’ organizational commitment mean scores were obtained through the TQ version of the questionnaire. Mean and ANOVA were used to describe gathered data and make inferences. This study found out that school administrators’ utilization of empirical -rational, environmental-adaptive, and power-coercive strategies were evident while use of the normative-reeducative strategy was moderately evident. Further, transformational leadership and transactional leadership were evident among the school administrators. Meanwhile, Laissez-Faire leadership is moderately evident. Further, affective, continuance and normative commitment dimensions of teachers were evident. Significant difference was found among the organizational commitment of teachers. Affective commitment level of teachers statistically significantly differ from their normative commitment and continuance commitment. Moreover, the degrees to which school administrators employ the different change management strategy significantly differ from each other. The use of empirical-rational as a change management strategy was found out to be statistically significantly different than power-coercive strategy and normative-reeducative strategy. Leadership styles of school administrators do not affect teachers’ commitment to the Department of Education (DepEd). Their commitment was attributed greatly to their affective attachment to the goals and values of the organization. It is also concluded that organizational commitment of teachers was influenced by change management strategies employed by school administrators but not by their leadership styles.


Introduction
Change is an ongoing natural process.It has become a way of life for an organization, the employees, as well as the managers (Leanna and Barry, 2000).With the rapidly occurring organizational change, the ability of managers to identify, cope and invest on this change has become a requirement for them to be effective (Wanberg and Banas, 2000).
Management of change focused highly on people's identity and the pattern of human interaction.It is the core competency of 21 st century leaders.Indeed, leaders as agents of change are required to be adept and inspirational (Nadler, Shaw and Walton, 1995;and Fullan, 2002).
Recently, the major changes in the Philippine educational system included the enactment of the K to 12 Program which added 2 years in High School, a mandatory Kindergarten before entering Grade 1, DepEd Rationalization Plan, implementation of Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education, adoption of Child Protection Policy, and granting of school's Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE).Consequently, the implementation of these programs of the Department of Education (DepEd) has been challenging.However, this methodical move by the government as perpetuated by the DepEd guarantees that they will produce knowledgeable, highly skilled and employable graduates.
In contrast, its realization produced fear and resistance in various organizations.Petitions were made to put off the program due to unpreparedness.Besides, politicians find the new program to be insufficient for the preparation of learners for the life after school.In addition, the new program challenged the skills of educational leaders in management and leadership.Even though these changes are deemed necessary for the future of the organization and the learners, the leaders are likely to face hindrances.
Problems with regard to the implementation of reforms at the lowest level of the educational system arise.Hence, successful implementation of change requires leaders to understand notions to facilitate and sustain reforms.Strategies of managing change and leaders' style have their own bearings on employees' organizational commitment (Nickols, 2016).
Consequently, school administrators observed some identifiable changes on teachers' performances.These were mainly aggravated by their frustrations on the reform which directly affected their commitment to work and to the organization.
In making its employees committed to the organization, the field of education oftentimes is confronted with challenges (Jones, 2000).The organizational commitment is an important concept indicated by better work satisfaction, decreased absences and transfer goals (Yousef, 2000) and it is recognized as determinant of organizational performance and effectiveness (Lok and Crawford, 2004).Thus, employees who are committed are less likely to develop tardiness or absenteeism (Davenport, 2010).
In addition, leadership is considered a vital factor in the start and realization of change in the organization and it encourages individuals through active management (Bass and Avolio, 1993).The researcher believed that conducting a scientific study was imperative to address the enumerated issues, challenges and problems in different schools of DepEd which have centered on change management, leadership styles and teachers' commitment.Pfeffer (1998) and Howell and Hall-Merenda (2002) stressed that it is important for the organization to know the elements that play critical roles in strengthening employees' commitment.
Accordingly, the study aimed at providing insights into various leadership styles utilized by school administrators and which one would result to better organizational commitment.Moreover, this attempted to explore if there exists a relationship between a leader's change management strategy and employees' organizational commitment.

Research Design
This study utilized a descriptive survey design as the researcher's main goal is merely to describe the variables in their current condition, as well to determine and state the existing relationships between them.This will determine the degree of practice of change management strategy and the dominant leadership style of school administrators as well as include the subordinate-teachers' level of organizational commitment.

Respondents of the Study
The respondents of the study were the school administrators, teachers, parent teachers' association (PTA) officials, and supreme student government (SSG) officers of mega schools of Region XII during school year 2015-2016.From the eleven (11) mega schools, the researcher considered the population of 1,813 teachers, 165 PTA officials, 165 SSG officers and 11 school administrators.

Sampling Technique
In determining the sample size for the teacher-respondents, the Slovin's (1960) formula was utilized.With their limited number, a total enumeration was applied to school head-respondents.Also, only 5 active PTA officials and 5 SSG officers in each mega school were purposely chosen as participants as they are reliable and familiar about the leadership styles and change management strategies employed by the school administrators.
In determining the sample size of the teachers in every school in the Region, proportional allocation was used.Based on the computation, a sample of 280 teachers represents proportionately all the public mega secondary schools in Region XII.Simple random sampling was utilized in determining the actual sample of the respondents.

Data Gathering Instrument
This study utilized three (3) set of questionnaires.The first set is the School Administrator version of the questionnaire or the AQ.The second set is the Teacher version of the questionnaire or the TQ.The third set is the Stakeholder version of the questionnaire or the SQ.
Basically, the AQ is composed of three parts: (a) the demographic profile of the respondents, (b) the Leadership Questionnaire; and (c) the researcher-made Change Management Strategy Questionnaire.The leadership questionnaire was adopted from Long (2004).The change management strategy questionnaire was researcher-made questionnaire based on assumptions of each indicator as stated by Nickols (2010).
The TQ is composed of four parts: (a) the demographic profile of the respondents; (b) the Leadership Questionnaire; (c) the researcher-made Change Management Strategy Questionnaire; and, (d) the Organizational Commitment Scale Questionnaire adopted from Allen and Meyer (1991).
The SQ or stakeholders version of the questionnaire had three parts: (a) the demographic profile of the respondents; (b) the Leadership Questionnaire; and, (c) the researcher-made Change Management Strategy Questionnaire.

Data Gathering Procedure
Upon the approval of the graduate school to conduct this study, the researcher prepared the necessary letters for the approval of the OIC Regional Director of DepEd to conduct the study.After which, the researcher asked permission from the different schools division superintendents to conduct the study in the schools under their jurisdiction.The school administrators, teachers, PTA officials and SSG officers, who were respondents of this study were given enough time to answer the questionnaire.Retrieval of the questionnaires was done as soon as the respondents answered all the items in the questionnaire.

Statistical Treatment
The gathered responses from the respondents were tallied using the Microsoft Excel in order to obtain a computer-generated analysis.Descriptive statistics like mean and standard deviation together with some inferential statistics such as Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were employed.
The mean was used to evaluate the extent of the change management strategies and leadership styles of the school administrators, and organizational commitment of teachers.
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test if there is a significant difference on the organizational commitment of teachers when categorized by the dominant change management strategy of school administrators.It was also used to determine the significant difference on the organizational commitment of teachers when grouped according to the leadership style of school administrators.Moreover, it was applied to determine if there is a significant difference among the change management strategies of school administrators as well as in the organizational commitment dimensions of the teachers.
The level of significance was set at 5% in all statistical tests.Both Microsoft Excel and Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) were used in the tabulation and analysis of data.

Evident
In Table 1, school administrators' normative-reeducative strategy was rated to be moderately evident as confirmed by the mean score of 2.34.This implies that school administrators involve the teachers in working out programs for the school.They involve and enlist informal leaders in the school and keep them involved in the change process.
Further, they believed that their teachers are creative and are capable that if once obstructions are removed, they will rise up to their full potential and accept reforms or innovations.
On the other hand, school administrators' empirical-rational strategy is evident.This connotes that school administrators present and communicate the facts to the teachers in order to help them understand the reasons or the need for change.These facts are often laid down during faculty meetings where the school administrator together with the teachers selects or decides on appropriate actions.
In addition, school administrators' environmental-adaptive and power-coercive strategies were found to be evident.This implies that the use of economic sanctions and authority to influence people in the implementation of change is evident among them.Desired change is enforced by them through rewards and punishment.Accordingly, administrators introduce new options to teachers and leave them with no other choice but to accept the change.
Change management means to shift the employees' mindset from the current state to a desired future state to increase effectiveness.People do not resist change automatically.They resist the way the change is handled.Most reasons for resisting change are not tangible because they can be based on fear, uncertainty, suspicion, and others.(Njuguna &Muathe, 2016) As revealed in Table 2, school administrators of mega schools in Region XII are evidently transformational leaders and transactional leaders as confirmed by the mean scores of 2.87 and 2.45 respectively.This connotes the evidence that school administrators are perceived by the respondents to be transformational leaders and transactional leaders.
This means that they articulate the compelling vision and actualize the mission of the DepEd by being inspirational leaders whose main objective is the welfare of the organization and their people.In addition, they are also leaders that provide clarity about what is expected and accepted from their subordinates.
In addition, it is also evident that they were leaders who led the group primarily by using social exchanges for any transactions.They give rewards to teachers to motivate them to effectively perform their duties and responsibilities and give disciplinary action to those who are not compliant with the agreed policies.
School heads in Region XII are inspirational leaders who are not only concerned and involved in the process of achieving the school's vision and mission; but are focused on helping every teacher succeed as well (Abdullah, 2015).The overall mean score of 2.57 proved that the organizational commitment level of teachers of mega schools of Region XII is evident as perceived by them.This means that they were motivated towards teaching profession and they already developed a sense of attachment to the DepEd.
It can be seen from the table that affective, continuance and normative commitment are described to be evident.This indicates that the different organizational commitment dimensions are evident among the teachers as perceived by them.This simply means that teachers had varying reasons to stay committed in DepEd.
However, affective commitment was identified to be the dominant dimension in the organizational commitment of teachers.This signifies that the teachers had a personal liking as they feel attached to the organization.It also purports that the teachers of Region XII are emotionally attached to their profession.They also 10.57030/23364890.cemj.31.2.104 1011 | P a g e depict a sense of obligation and as a result, they always try to be productive at work.Distinctly, teachers always try to make everyone happy and put maximum effort in achieving the goals of the school.Affective commitment was the highest rated determinant of organizational commitment.Continuance commitment and normative commitment dimensions are also manifested among teachers.This infers that the teachers are also opportunity seekers and are attached to their schools psychologically (Sow, 2015)  Table 4 shows the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) of teachers' organizational commitment when categorized by the school administrators' change management strategy.The analysis shows that change management strategy employed by school administrators significantly affect the organizational commitment of teachers (Fcomp = 3.10 >Ftab(0.05)= 3.03).To better appreciate the effect, a multiple comparison of means is necessary, thus the posthoc analysis is presented in Table 5.The Tukey's HSD test indicates that school administrators who are dominantly using empirical-rational change management strategy have teachers with relatively higher organizational commitment (̅ = 2.66) as compared to those who are employing environmental-adaptive strategy and power-coercive strategy with teachers' organizational commitment of 2.54 and 2.48, respectively.
In contrast, means with the same superscripts denote that there is no statistically significant difference between the organizational commitments of teachers.School administrators who are dominantly utilizing environmental-adaptive and power-coercive strategy have teachers with comparable organizational commitment means.
Further, normative-reeducative strategy was not included in the post-hoc analysis as statistical results signified that none of the teachers stated that the dominant change management strategy of their school administrators is normative-reeducative.
This further implies that the level of teachers' commitment in the organization is significantly affected with how change is being implemented by their school administrators.Sofat et al. (2015) also found out that organizational change initiatives ultimately led to increase the organizational commitment of the employees.They also emphasized that when change was implemented, the best determinants to make the employees committed to the organization were empirical-rational and environmentaladaptive strategies.Moreover, they found out that change management initiatives gave maximum impact on employees' commitment.They stressed that employees felt obligated to remain with their organization when their leaders' change management strategies conform to the needs of majority.Table 6 shows that Fcomp= 0.639 <Ftab (0.05)= 3.03.Thus, the result fails to reject the null hypothesis that the organizational commitment of teachers is not significantly affected by the school administrators' leadership style.This means that regardless of what leadership style a school administrator possesses, it has no influence over the degree of teachers' organizational commitment towards their school.In other words, teachers remained committed to DepEd because of the leadership styles of school administrators.Analysis of variance on the change management strategies of school administrators shows that Fcomp= 88.432 > F tab (0.05) = 2.61.Thus, we reject the null hypothesis that there is no significant difference among the change management strategies of school administrators.To better appreciate the difference, a multiple comparison of means is necessary, thus the post hoc analysis in Table 8.

Table 8. Post-hoc Analysis on Change Management Strategies
Employed by the School Administrators through the Tukey's HSD Test Change Management Strategies Mean 1.
Normative-Reeducative 2.34 c Note: Means of the same superscripts have no significant difference at α= 0.05.
It can be gleaned from the Table 8 that the two change management strategies, environmental-adaptive and empirical-rational, were marked by the same superscript which implies that these two were comparable and have no significant difference.This means that the extent to which school administrators employ empirical-rational strategy and environmental-adaptive strategy is the same.This infers that the degree in which school administrators consider the importance of gathering accurate information and data is comparable with building new environment and introducing new options to implement change.
While considering the accuracy of information gathered and the important role of dialogue in the understanding of change, school administrators, find it equally important to make teachers understand that in their present situation, they have no choice but to accept change.Once teachers are informed of the desired change and are involved in decision making, they would readily adapt the new system.
Moreover, it can be seen that the school administrators' use of environmental-adaptive strategy (̅ = 3.05) and empirical-rational (̅ = 3.02) strategy are more dominant over normative-reeducative(̅ = 2.34) and powercoercive(̅ = 2.50) as shown by their respective means.This shows that school administrators dominantly employ empirical-rational and environmental-adaptive strategies in the implementation of desired change.Administrators help the teachers understand the need for change by communicating the facts and introducing new options to them.
On the other hand, normative-reeducative strategy is found to be the least dominant change management strategy employed by school administrators.This indicates that considering the norms and values of the organization in initiating activities to bring about change is not relatively apparent among school administrators.
This finding is similar with the principle of Bye (2007) as cited by Njuguna & Muathe (2016).They stated that organizational change seems inevitable regardless of the extent to which organizations are ready to deal with it.Analysis of variance on teachers' organizational commitment dimensions is presented in Table 9.The analysis indicates that there is a significant difference between the extent of the organizational commitment dimensions of the teachers (Fcomp= 9.02> F tab (0.05)= 3.01).To better appreciate the difference, a multiple comparison of means is necessary; thus, the post hoc analysis in Table 10.As reflected in the table, distinct superscript is received by affective commitment when compared with continuance commitment and normative commitment.The Tukey's HSD test indicates that there is a statistically significant difference between the affective commitment and the other two organizational commitment dimensions of teachers.
In other words, the extent to which teachers prefer to stay in the profession because of his attachment to the goals and values of the organization was not comparable with the degree of teachers' continuance and normative commitment.This further infers that teachers' commitment to the organization due to emotional attachment is significantly different from their commitment due to the fact that leaving would entail a lot of sacrifice and it is morally right to stay in the organization.
In addition, teachers' perceived obligation to stay in the organization is statistically significantly different from the teachers' desire to remain in the organization.Moreover, teachers' strong sense of belongingness is significantly higher than their belief that it is a moral obligation to stay in the organization after receiving some favors and benefit from it.
Remarkably, teachers' affective commitment (̅ = 2.67) is relatively higher than normative commitment (̅ = 2.51) and continuance commitment (̅ = 2.52) as indicated by their respective means.This connotes that teachers' emotional attachment to the organization is higher than their perceived obligation to stay in the organization.Similarly, feeling like part of a family within the organization is also higher than their perceived need to stay with the organization.
On the contrary, the extent of both continuance and normative commitment was comparable.This means that the extent of both organizational commitment dimensions have no significant difference.In other words, teachers' fear for loss of job had the same degree as with teachers' moral or sense of obligation to stay in the organization.
This finding supports the study of Smith (2009) who emphasized that there were different dimensions why teacher commitment remained high despite of many factors affecting the school environment.Some of the social dimensions why teachers were committed to their job were good working conditions, teacher efficacy, peer support, school principal's influence, job satisfaction, innate motivation and love to teach children.

Conclusions And Recommendations
From this study, it is concluded that change management strategies of school administrators significantly affect the teachers' organizational commitment.Teachers whose school administrators dominantly employ 10.57030/23364890.cemj.31.2.104 1014 | P a g e empirical-rational strategy have higher organizational commitment than those teachers whose school administrators dominantly employ environmental-adaptive strategy and power-coercive strategy.On the other hand, teachers' organizational commitment is not significantly affected by the school administrators' leadership styles.Regardless of what leadership style a school administrator employ, it does not affect teachers' organizational commitment.It was also found out that the various change management strategies employed by school administrators significantly differ from each other.The degree to which empirical-rational strategy and environmental-adaptive were utilized by the school administrators is significantly different than normative-reeducative strategy and power-coercive strategy.
Similarly, there is a statistically significant difference among the level of organizational commitment dimensions displayed by the teachers.The affective commitment dimension of the organizational commitment of teachers is significantly different than the normative commitment and continuance commitment dimensions.
This study recommends that school administrators may enhance their utilization of the various change management strategies.If change is not managed effectively, the results can range from inefficiencies, duplicated efforts and loss of financial resources for the change.They may regularly evaluate their leadership styles using varied evaluation tool.Internal and external stakeholders may be considered as evaluators in order to have a reliable result.Further, they may seek further knowledge and skills in employing appropriate management strategies in order to strengthen teachers' organizational commitment.They may consider listening to teachers' ideas and concerns with an open mind to encourage honesty and sincerity.This may increase teachers' normative commitment in the long run.Moreover, school administrators may come up with school level programs that may build up teachers' normative and continuance commitment.
Further, study may be conducted to uncover the other underlying factors that affect teachers' commitment to the organization.Another study may be conducted to determine the influence of school administrators' change management strategy and leadership styles to teachers' commitment using another research instrument to validate the findings of this research.

Table 3 ,
summarizes the extent of teachers' organizational commitment as perceived by the respondents.

Table 6 . Analysis of Variance of Teachers' Organizational Commitment as a Factor of School Administrators' Leadership Styles Sources of Variation df Mean Squares Fcomp Ftab(0.05) Interpretation
10.57030/23364890.cemj.31.2.104 1012 | P a g e

Table 9 . Analysis of Variance on Teachers' Organizational Commitment Dimensions
With this, organizational leaders should employ the best change management strategy they think necessary for the needs of majority.

Table 10 . Post-hoc Analysis on Organizational Commitment Dimensions of Teachers through the Tukey's HSD Test
Note: of the same superscripts have no significant difference at α = 0.05.