School principals' Resistance to Change: Relationship to their Self-Efficacy related to Work and Transformative Leadership

Abstract

The school system in Quebec is undergoing many changes. According to some researchers, resistance, which is an integral part of the process, could jeopardize the success of these changes. As the leader of implementing changes, school principals could be susceptible to be resistant. Different factors influence resistance to change. Research suggests that self-efficacy influence resistance to change. Likewise, one author indicates relationships between resistance to change and general self-efficacy. Other researchers indicate that factors such as leadership could influence school principals' resistance to change. However, the relationships between these three constructs among Quebec’s school principals do not appear to have been systematically investigated. The purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between school principals' self-efficacy related to work, their transformative leadership and their resistance to change. One hundred twenty-seven school principals fill out the French version of three questionnaires: the School Principal Sense of Self-Efficacy Scale, the Leadership Self-report Scale, and the Resistance to Change scale. The results indicate that relationships exist between some factors of the three constructs. Moreover, transformative leadership plays an intermediary role between self-efficacy related to work and resistance to change. These results are discussed according to previous studies, as well as the theory of self-efficacy, the theory of transformative leadership and the theory of resistance to change.