Journal of Educational and Management Studies  
J Educ Manage Stud, 9(1): 01-09, March 25, 2019  
License: CC BY 4.0, ISSN: 2322-4770  
The relationship between distributed leadership  
and teachers’ organizational commitment in  
Guangzhou city, China  
Shoruok Mohammed Farag Mohammed Aboudahr and Liu Jiali   
School of Education and Modern Languages University Utara, Malaysia  
E-mails: shroukaboudaher@gmail.com, 335321811@qq.com  
ABSTRACT  
Original Article  
PII: S232247701900001-9  
Since teachers and school leaders can establish cooperation and interaction to improve  
student performance, distributed leadership becomes a practical necessity of the education  
system. Study on distributed leadership is still in its infancy and needs to be improved. This  
Rec. 30 January 2019  
study aimed to determine the relationship between distributed leadership and teachers’  
Acc. 18 March 2019  
organizational commitment based on secondary schools in Baiyun district in Guangzhou city,  
Pub. 25 March 2019  
China. This study conducted using the quantitative survey approach. The respondents for  
study, who comprised of 98 teachers, were selected through random sampling from 2  
secondary schools. The data of the study has been collected by using 22 items of Distributed  
Keywords  
Leadership Inventory which was developed by Hulpia et al. (2009), and 15 items of  
Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) which was developed by Mowday (1979).  
The data analysis using Descriptive Statistics, Independent Sample t-test, one-way ANOVA  
and Pearson correlation with SPSS version 22. According to the findings of the study, there  
were no differences between gender and teaching work experience towards organizational  
commitment. In addition, there was a positive relationship between school distributed  
leadership and teachers’ organizational commitment. Besides, school principals’ distributed  
leadership significantly predict teachers’ organizational commitment. According to these  
findings, it is recommended that school leaders, in addition to sharing the clear vision, should  
also conduct decentralized leadership for teachers, regardless of gender or teaching work  
experience.  
Distributed leadership,  
organizational  
Commitment,  
Support,  
Supervision,  
Leadership team,  
Secondary school  
teachers  
is the key to the development of the school and the  
premise of student development. Because the quality  
of teachers determines the quality of education, it is  
difficult for low-quality teachers to produce high-  
quality students. It is impossible to achieve the  
scientific development of education without a team  
of teachers suitable for the development of the  
But teachers around the world now face  
problems such as job burnout, workload and  
turnover. Many schools are feeling the impact of this  
shift as teachers leave the industry faster and faster.  
In fact, research shows that 17% of new teachers  
leave the classroom in the first five years of teaching.  
According to Kena et al. (2015), this proportion has  
steadily increased by 3-5% every year since 2008,  
making it a hot commodity for senior teachers (over  
10 years). The workload of teachers refers to the  
tasks and time spent by teachers to complete  
INTRODUCTION  
Education is an important tool for everyone to  
succeed in life and get different things. It helps to  
alleviate the challenges of life's difficult life. The  
knowledge gained throughout education made  
everyone feel confident in their lives. It offers a  
variety of opportunities to achieve a better life and  
thus promotes career development. The government  
has launched a number of campaigns to improve the  
value of education in the countryside. It brings  
equality to all people in society and promotes the  
development and development of the country  
(Power, 2014). Education plays also a vital role in the  
modern technological world. As a while, teachers  
play an important role in education. A good teacher  
helps us to become good citizens in society and good  
citizens in our country. Teachers know that students  
are the future of any country. Teacher development  
To cite this paper: Mohammed Aboudahr ShMF and Jiali L (2019). The relationship between distributed leadership and teachers’ organizational commitment in  
Guangzhou city, China. J. Educ. Manage. Stud., 9(1): 01-09. https://dx.doi.org/10.51475/jems.2019.1  
1
Mohammed Aboudahr and Jiali, 2019  
professional roles. The research shows that teachers'  
Problem statement  
working conditions have changed a lot in recent  
years. First, the teacher's task, the number of  
students they face, and the amount of time they have  
to control themselves. Second, teaching is more  
instrumental, expressive and effective, reducing the  
teaching satisfaction and professionalism (Lee et al.,  
2015).  
First, the teacher management system in China  
is in a critical situation. At present, China's teacher  
management is still dominated by economic  
contracts and regulations. In the personnel system,  
performance appraisal system, promotion system,  
salary management system, medical insurance  
system and a series of the system itself and the  
system implementation process, inevitably, is  
imperfect and unfair, unreasonable system lack  
problem. Only by gradually improving economic  
contracts and regulations can we solve these  
problems (Yao, 2011). Therefore, it is very easy for  
teachers to produce some unbalanced and  
unsatisfactory psychological states, which to some  
extent inhibits teachers' work enthusiasm and  
initiative, which is not conducive to improving  
teaching quality.  
Secondly, teacher job burnout increases.  
Because school enrolment expansion in recent years,  
Chinese teachers with time is very short, it is  
difficult to keep up with the massive growth of  
students, teachers' workload has increased  
dramatically, many teachers teach several tasks at  
the same time, in order to ensure the quality will  
inevitably increase the pressure of work (Jiang,  
2016), On the other hand, the reform of curriculum  
structure and content system, the rapid updating of  
modern teaching means and means, have put  
forward higher requirements for improving  
teachers' knowledge reserve and skills. At the same  
time, teachers must complete the scientific research  
tasks required by the school. In this long and heavy  
workload, teachers tend to cause job burnout among  
teachers. The emergence of job burnout has also led  
to teachers' enthusiasm for teachers, job insecurity  
and declining performance (Gao et al., 2014).  
After more than 20 years of reform and  
opening-up, China's society and economy have  
undergone tremendous changes. Although education  
has a certain lag in the superstructure, it is  
undergoing profound reform and development in  
order to adapt to the reform and development of the  
social economy. The adaptability of these macro  
backgrounds and teacher’s education has un-  
doubtedly become the basis and impetus for  
education teacher reform and development. Teacher  
occupation is a high - pressure profession. According  
to a Beijing-based survey conducted by the Institute  
of Basic Education of the Beijing Research Institute  
of Education, 93.1% of people believe that teachers  
are becoming more and more difficult and stressful.  
50.8% of the teachers said they would consider  
changing jobs if they thought they were organic. A  
joint survey conducted by the Shanghai Teacher  
Training Center, the Shanghai Mental Health Center  
and Shanghai Normal University showed that the  
detection rate of teacher's mental disorder is as high  
as 48%. Of these, 12% had significant mental  
disorders, 2% were severe, symptoms were anxiety,  
depression, irritability, neurasthenia, and memory  
loss. Career stress is a double-edged sword (Bao &  
Wang, 2012). Professional pressure on teachers'  
negative impact is mainly reflected in: first, mood  
disorders and mental health of teachers, often appear  
inexplicable anxiety, anxiety, depression, helpless,  
often angry, low self-efficacy, to the satisfaction and  
job burnout. Secondly, it leads to an increase in  
teachers' physical diseases. Studies show that  
constant stress can damage people's circulation and  
digestion, leading to diseases such as the heart,  
lungs, muscles and joints, and speed up the ageing  
process. Third, it leads to an increase in teacher  
negative behaviour: loss of control, insomnia, loss of  
appetite, smoking and alcohol abuse. The above three  
aspects are interrelated and influence each other,  
forming a vicious circle, which aggravates the  
psychological crisis of teachers, leading to many  
teachers teaching, changing jobs and retiring early  
Third, the loss of teacher resources is serious.  
The flow of teacher resources can be divided into  
explicit loss and hidden loss. A clear loss is when a  
teacher leaves the job and moves to another school  
or workplace. Along with our country school  
personnel system reform and the implementation of  
the teachers' employment system, loss of teachers  
showed a one-way flow, the characteristics of the  
shift from economic less-developed areas to  
developed areas, focus on colleges and universities,  
colleges and universities for instance, university of  
traffic exacerbated the imbalance of education  
between regions (Zhao, 2010). The hidden loss  
manifests as the transfer of teachers' energy,  
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J. Educ. Manage. Stud., 9(1): 01-09, 2019  
neglecting their own work and paying more  
past decade or so. Research into the group's  
commitment to Chinese teachers has just begun.  
With the deepening of the research, people are  
increasingly aware that in education, the human  
resources of teachers are more important than any  
other resources. Teacher's attitude and behaviour  
directly affect the effectiveness of education teaching  
(Xia & Lee, 2014). On the other hand, scholars in  
education began to study the organizational  
commitment of teachers because of organizational  
commitment to predict psychological phenomena  
such as effort and turnover intention.  
attention to the development of the second career.  
Teacher occupation and income is relatively stable,  
make the dominant loss relative to other professional  
college teachers is low, but due to the development of  
the market economy system and teachers face  
housing, income, and the cause of severe reality  
problem such as the recessive loss of teacher  
resources, the main performance on the job for less  
energy input, professional in the second, lack of  
initiative will update their teaching and scientific  
research task of knowledge and skills of  
perfunctory response (Zeng & Qi, 2013).  
a
From the perspective of practice, the value of  
the school lies in cultivating and cultivating talents,  
exploring and discovering knowledge, serving and  
contributing to the society, inheriting and  
developing civilization. Therefore, the role of teacher  
organization in the process is crucial. First of all, the  
teacher's organizational commitment level is the  
best predictor of teacher resource turnover.  
Secondly, the high level of organizational  
commitment is the decisive factor for the stability of  
the school teachers and the guarantee of the stable  
development of the school. Thirdly, the level of  
teachers' organizational commitment is an  
important indicator to predict the achievement of  
school organizational goals and influence the  
performance of school organizational effectiveness.  
Fourthly, teachers' organizational commitment level  
will affect teachers' performance and promote the  
smooth development of school work. Fifth, it is  
conducive to the improvement of the school  
management system and teacher career planning  
and development. In addition, the study will narrow  
the gap between previous studies.  
Fourthly, the construction of teacher ethics is  
flawed. In the process of China's transition from a  
planned economy to a market economy, due to the  
imperfect development of China's socialist market  
economy, the construction of social morality has had  
some negative effects. Market economy aims at  
maximizing profit. The principle of equal exchange is  
an unrestricted principle for all aspects of social life,  
and people's values are greatly affected.  
Individualism, hedonism, money worship, such as  
negative values also filled with the school, some  
teachers lack teaching, a tenured professor respect-  
work spirit, seriously affected the professional image  
of the teachers and students' physical and mental  
health (Imachukwu, 2014). In light of these problems,  
this study aims to explore the relationship between  
distributed leadership and teacher’s organizational  
commitment. Therefore, the following are the  
research questions to be solved.  
Significance of the study  
The focus of this study is distributed leadership  
and teacher organization. A comprehensive analysis  
of their relationship will be conducted. These  
findings will provide new insights into the effective  
management of schools and teachers and will help  
teachers reduce stress. These findings are important  
not only to school principals and teachers but also to  
students. If the school principal changes its  
leadership style, the school will have a better culture  
and a freer learning environment. Better study for  
students.  
From a theoretical perspective, organizational  
commitment research originates from enterprise  
management. Whether it is the basic source of  
theory or the scope of application, it is all about  
enterprise management. Foreign interest in teacher  
organization commitments has only begun in the  
Literature review  
Nowadays, many studies show that the  
leadership style of the principal is one of the most  
important factors to help school management  
succeed. Effective principals have indirect effects on  
school and student performance (not directly)  
because they shape the school's internal processes,  
climate, relationships and resources. According to  
established effective principles to focus on the  
effective principles of the four core leadership  
practices; Set the direction, train the talent, redesign  
the organization, and improve the teaching plan. His  
research on the leadership style of the principal is  
the most important in transformational leadership,  
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Mohammed Aboudahr and Jiali, 2019  
transactional leadership, teaching leadership and  
decentralized leadership. The study focused only on  
distributed leadership.  
separate activities. This leadership style related to  
social distribution, the functions of distributed  
leadership are extended to many individuals, leaders  
accomplished tasks through multiple interactions.  
As a while as Gronn (2000) defines distributed  
leadership as an emerging attribute of a population.  
At the same time, he also claims distributed  
leadership is a network interaction. Although Gronn  
and Spillane theoretically define distributed  
leadership, in empirical research it is still a nebulous  
concept, and relatively few studies attempt to  
measure it. One of the criticisms of research on  
Shared or distributed leadership is the lack of  
consensus on its definition.  
Distributed leadership is a new education  
leadership theory proposed in the 1990s. It is  
favoured by many scholars and experts. It is a leader,  
follower, and interactive network leadership practice  
in a given situation. According to Gronn (2000), the  
concept of "distributed leadership" first appeared in  
the social psychology literature of the early 1950s. So  
far, distributed leadership has not been defined  
precisely, but some scholars have made some useful  
explorations. According to Lakomski (2005)  
distributed leadership means leadership. Leadership  
is distributed in structured organizational  
relationships and expressed in the form of joint  
forces in the organization. In the Gronn (2002),  
distributed leadership offers a new commitment of  
"analysis unit", through the "analysis unit" can be  
from the overall sense of leadership, rather than  
simply as a collection of individual contributions.  
Distributed leadership is a leadership practice that  
involves leadership Shared across the organization,  
where leadership responsibilities are shared in  
related skills and expertise (Spillane et al., 2004).  
More specifically, organizational commitment  
is composed of Mowbray (1994) defined, is composed  
of three parts: "the identity of the organization's  
goals and values, desire for the organization, as well  
as the organizational willingness to show effort."  
Similarly, Meyer and Allen, a three-component model  
is put forward, affective commitment is a want  
attached to the organization, continuance  
commitment is a people believe that they need to be  
attached to the organization and normative  
commitment is a people believe that they should be  
in the organization. These different types of  
commitments have different impacts on the  
organization's performance, and one person can  
show all of them. Organizational commitment is a  
state in which employees are committed to assisting  
in achieving organizational goals, as well as the level  
of identity, participation, and loyalty of employees.  
This is an emotional response that can be measured  
by people's behaviour, beliefs and attitudes, and can  
range from very low to very high.  
Previous  
distributed  
research  
leadership  
has  
from  
operationalized  
two different  
perspectives. First, Leithwood and Mascall (2008)  
studied potential sources of influence, such as  
principals, regional managers, and teachers with  
designated leadership roles. The researchers  
investigated who was responsible for key leadership  
functions. Second, Pearce and Sims (2002) focused on  
the overall leadership team.  
Therefore, in this study, the researchers  
distinguished distributed leadership into three  
dimensions,  
principals’  
support,  
principal’s  
supervision and cohesive leadership team. According  
to Hulpia and Devos (2010) study in distributed  
leadership, a series of research and theory on the  
concept of organization function to the  
conceptualization, and members of what school is  
usually responsible for implementing these  
functions. In their research, they chose two main  
functions of the effective school leaders that were  
mentioned in the teaching and change leadership  
model, and the ones that were mentioned in the  
education revolution literature: supporting people,  
supervising teachers.  
Conceptual framework  
The research framework for the study is the  
relationship between distributed leadership and  
teacher’s organizational commitment to a secondary  
school in China. The conceptual framework has one  
independent  
variable  
which  
includes  
five  
dimensions, gender, teaching work experience,  
support, supervision, and cooperation of the  
leadership team, while teacher’s organizational  
commitment is the dependent variable.  
Theoretical framework  
Spillane (2006) pointed out that for the leader  
and their followers, distributed leadership as a  
practice has own situations, it consists of several  
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J. Educ. Manage. Stud., 9(1): 01-09, 2019  
Population  
The target population refers to the entire group  
which a researcher is interested in; the researcher  
wishes to conclusions by the group. As the objective  
is to examine the effect of distributed leadership on  
teachers’ basic psychological needs satisfaction,  
therefore some selected secondary schools in China  
are the target population of this research study. The  
schools were chosen to be investigated by this study.  
Schools were chosen from the Baiyun districts in  
Guangzhou city. According to the Ministry of  
Education in China for 2016-2017, there are 896  
teachers in Baiyun districts in Guangzhou city.  
Figure 1. Developed by the Researcher, 2018.  
Sample and sampling technique  
Choosing 98 teachers by using simple random  
sampling, questionnaires were distributed to these  
teachers. With the reference of Krejcie and Morgan’s  
(1970) sample size table, the sample size of this study  
will be 98 teachers, comprised 22 (22.4%) male  
teachers and 76 (77.6%) female teachers.  
METHODOLOGY  
Research design  
This research is focusing on the relationship  
between distributed leadership and teacher’s  
organizational commitment. This study is  
quantitative in nature by using survey method to  
examine the relationship between independent and  
dependent variables. The analysis implemented to  
make sure the teacher who participated in the survey  
has a clear understanding of their principal’s  
leadership style. The questionnaires consisted of  
three parts. Part one was designed to identify the  
demographic variables of respondents. Part two is  
distributed leadership inventory; the dimensions of  
distributed leadership were mainly measured by 22  
items. Part three was designed to measure the  
Secondary Public-School teachers’ organizational  
commitment. The questionnaire for Organizational  
Commitment was obtained by using the 15 items of  
Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ)  
which was developed by Mowday et al. (1979).  
Research instrument  
To ensure the research is conducted effectively  
and efficiently, the detail of the procedures of  
obtaining information is needed in conducting the  
study in order to solve the problem. The quantitative  
research method was primarily used to obtain the  
information need for the purpose of the study. The  
questionnaires consisted of three parts. Part one was  
designed to identify the demographic variables of  
respondents by 2 items: gender and teaching work  
experience. Part two is Distributed Leadership  
Inventory. Distributed Leadership Inventory has  
been developed by Hulpia et al. (2009) with the  
purpose of determining teachers’ perception levels of  
school principals’ distributed leadership behaviours.  
Which include three dimensions: support,  
supervision, and cohesive leadership team. The  
dimensions of distributed leadership were mainly  
measured by 22 items.  
Table 1. Test that has been used to treat study hypotheses  
Hypotheses  
Test  
Ho (1): There are no significant differences between gender and organizational  
commitment among secondary school teachers.  
Independent Samples t-test  
ANOVA  
Ho (2): There are no significant differences between teaching work experiences  
and teachers organizational commitment.  
Ho (3): There is no significant relationship between support and teachers  
organizational commitment.  
Pearson Correlation  
Ho (4): There is no significant relationship between supervision and teachers  
organizational commitment.  
Ho (5): There is no significant relationship between cohesive leadership team  
and teachers organizational commitment.  
Pearson Correlation  
Pearson Correlation  
5
Mohammed Aboudahr and Jiali, 2019  
organizational commitment among these two  
secondary schools is very low.  
RESULTS  
All data were analyzed using the statistical package  
of social science (SPSS version 22.0). Descriptive  
statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA and  
Pearson correlation. According to table 2 research,  
the total of secondary school teachers involved in  
this study is 98, comprised 22 (22.4%) male teachers  
and 76 (77.6%) female teachers. This presented the  
frequency of female teachers were more than male  
teachers.  
Differences between gender and teachers’  
organizational commitment  
Based on table 4 Levene’s Test was not  
significant (P>0.05). The result shows that there is  
equal assumed between male and female secondary  
school teachers on organizational commitment.  
Therefore, Independent Sample t-test was  
statistically not significant (t (96)=4.78, P>0.05). This  
result failed to reject null hypothesis (Ho). There  
were no significant differences between male and  
female teachers on organizational commitment  
among secondary school teachers.  
Secondary school teacher’ based on Teaching  
Work Experiences  
As shown in Table 2 below, 68 (69.4%) teachers  
had between 1-5 years of teaching work experience,  
23 (23.5%) teachers had between 6-10 years of  
teaching work experience. Also 7 (7.1%) teachers had  
between 11-15 years of teaching work experience.  
Most of teaching work experience have had between  
1-5 years in service.  
Differences  
experiences and  
commitment  
between  
teachers’  
teaching  
work  
organizational  
Hypothesis H2 was tested using ANOVA. In the  
current study the mean difference and it is  
significant level was set at P<0.05. In order to  
determine whether there is significant difference in  
teaching work experience on organizational  
commitment, one-way ANOVA is conducted.  
Table 2 - Respondent’s distribution based on gender  
Gender  
Frequency Percentage  
(%)  
Male  
Female  
Total  
22  
76  
98  
22.4  
77.6  
100  
Result in Table 5, shows that there are equal  
variances assumed between teaching work  
experience  
towards  
teachers’  
organizational  
commitment. The one-way ANOVA was not  
significant F (2, 95)=2.53, P>0.05) between teaching  
work experience towards teachers’ organizational  
commitment. This result failed to reject null  
hypothesis (Ho). Hence, there were no significant  
differences between teaching work experiences and  
teacher’s organizational commitment.  
Table 3 The level of principals distributed leadership  
and organizational commitment.  
Variables  
Principals’ support  
Principals’ supervision  
Cohesive leadership team  
Teachers’ organizational commitment  
Mean  
3.42  
3.80  
3.43  
SD  
0.73  
0.74  
0.71  
0.34  
2.98  
Relationship between principals’ support and  
teachers’ organizational commitment  
Research findings based on research  
hypotheses  
Based on table 6 the finding indicates that the  
Pearson correlation was a positively significant  
relationship between support and teachers  
organizational commitment (r=0.47, P<0.01). High  
support from school principal in the school shows  
high teacher organizational commitment. While low  
support from school principle shows low teacher  
organizational commitment. There is a low positive  
relationship between principals’ support and  
teachers’ organizational commitment.  
As in earlier, there were two research questions  
that established six hypotheses in this current study.  
Therefore, this section displays the findings of  
hypotheses testing based on a relevant research  
question and research hypotheses.  
The level of principals distributed leadership  
and organizational commitment  
Based on the table, the secondary school  
principals’ supervision shows the mean (M=3.80,  
SD=0.74) of principals’ supervision is very high  
followed by the mean (M=3.43, SD=0.71) of cohesive  
leadership team, and the mean (M=3.42, SD=0.73) of  
principals’ support is very close to cohesive  
leadership team. In addition, the mean (M=2.98,  
SD=0.34) of teachers’ organizational commitment is  
very low. It means the level of teachers’  
Relationship between Principals’ Supervision and  
teachers’ organizational commitment  
Table 7 shows that there was a positive relationship  
between supervision and teachers organizational  
commitment (r=0.21, P<0.05). It means high  
supervision shows high teachers organizational  
commitment and low supervision shows low  
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J. Educ. Manage. Stud., 9(1): 01-09, 2019  
teachers organizational commitment. There is a very  
low positive relationship between Principals’  
leadership team and teachers, organizational  
commitment (r=0.637, p<0.01). The school whose  
leadership team is more cohesive shows higher  
organizational commitment. On the contrary, the  
low cohesive leadership team shows low teachers’  
Supervision  
and  
Teachers  
Organizational  
Commitment.  
Relationship between the cohesive leadership  
team and teachers’ organizational commitment  
According to table 8 the result implies that was  
organizational commitment. There is  
moderate positive relationship between principals’  
a
very  
supervision  
and  
teachers’  
organizational  
a
positive relationship between the cohesive  
commitment.  
Table 4. Independent T-Test between Gender and Organizational Commitment.  
Gender  
Male  
Female  
N
22  
76  
Mean  
3.25  
2.91  
SD  
0.34  
0.29  
df  
96  
-
t
4.78  
-
p
0.213  
-
Table 5. the one-way ANOVA between Teaching Work Experience on Organizational Commitment.  
Teaching work experience  
1-5  
6-10  
11-15  
N
68  
23  
7
Mean  
2.94  
3.08  
3.15  
SD  
df1  
2
df2  
95  
F
2.53  
p
0.08  
0.35  
0.26  
0.27  
Table 6. The Relationship between Principals’ Support and Teachers Organizational Commitment.  
Independent variable  
Support  
Teachers Organizational Commitment.  
0.467**  
Table 7. The relationship between Principals’ Supervision and Teachers Organizational Commitment.  
Independent variable  
Supervision  
Teachers Organizational Commitment  
0.21*  
Table 8. The relationship between Cohesive Leadership Team and Teachers Organizational Commitment.  
Independent variable  
cohesive leadership team  
Teachers Organizational Commitment  
0.637**  
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION  
Gender  
on  
teachers’  
organizational  
commitment  
Discussion of findings based on the research  
question  
In this study, the organizational commitment  
among male and female teachers have no differences.  
The male teachers and the female teachers have the  
same perceptive on commitment in Guangzhou city.  
This study concurred with finding of Voloshin (2016).  
The discussion in this chapter examined the  
three research questions of the current study. Based  
on the result of the hypothesis and findings. Also, the  
findings were compared with similar researches in  
the literature reviewed.  
Teaching work experience on teachers’  
organizational commitment  
The level of principals’ distributed leadership  
and teachers’ organizational  
The result indicated that teaching work  
experience will not influence the teachers’  
perception of organizational commitment among  
these two schools in Guangzhou city, China. The  
result concurred with finding (Gholipouret al., 2012),  
the finding also shows there was no significant  
correlation between teacher's organizational  
commitment and organizational work experience in  
Tehran province, Iran. On the opposite, Lee (2016)  
stated there were significantly different in teaching  
working experience in Shenzhen city, China.  
The results show that the level of principal’s  
distributed leadership in secondary schools is  
moderate. But the level of organizational  
commitment among teachers is very low. It means  
this schools’ principals have a moderate level of  
leadership but the teachers in these school feel not  
committed. This result is in line with study of Chen  
(2010), the distributed leadership among school  
principals in Ningxia province is at a moderate level  
and also the teachers feel low commitment.  
7
Mohammed Aboudahr and Jiali, 2019  
Principals’ support on teachers organizational  
commitment  
Future research  
This study is only limited to research in  
secondary school. Therefore, the data and results are  
only applicable to research in a secondary school in  
Guangzhou city. School in different area have  
different characteristics, the characteristics of  
teachers' organizational commitment also have  
bigger difference. Therefore, it is also meaningful to  
compare the differences between teachers'  
organizational commitment in different regions.  
In current study, the support of school  
principals has a low level in Guangzhou city. But the  
support from principals also will influence teachers’  
organizational commitment. The more support from  
principals the more commitment teachers felt. The  
result concurred with finding Hulpia et al. (2010).  
Compared with supervision the number of  
principals’ support for teacher’s organizational  
commitment is more important in Belgium. This  
study is support of the research by Akdemir and Ayik  
(2017), supervision is one of the sub-dimensions of  
distributed leadership behaviour and organizational  
commitment of school principals, and there is a  
low\positive and significant relationship between  
them in secondary schools of Erzurum in Turkey.  
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