The Relationship between Work Engagement and Organizational Trust: A Study of Elementary School Teachers in Turkey

Abstract

The relationships based on trust which are established by a teacher with a school’s internal stakeholders can provide greater engagement in work. Teachers who are engaged in their jobs can be decisive in turning their schools into successful and effective schools. It is important to research the relationship between work engagement and organizational trust in teachers since these are two significant variables affecting the performance and productivity of employees. The main purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between elementary school teachers’ sense/understanding of work engagement and their understanding of organizational trust. The research is a correlational research study. Its environment consisted of 4016 elementary school teachers. 559 of the teachers were included in the sample. In the research the “Utrecht Work Engagement Scale” and “Multipurpose T Scale” were appropriately/ favourably used. In this research, confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analyses were repeated in order to validate the structure described in the scale. In the research, it is concluded that there is a positive, high level of significant relationship between participant teachers’ perceptions of work engagement and their perceptions of organizational trust.