The power of organizational resilience to rebound: linking middle-leaders’ transformational leadership and school outcomes

Purpose – This study examines whether school organizational resilience (OR) serves as an explanatory pathwayin the association between middle leaders’ transformational leadership (TL) and three dimensions of schoolorganizational health in secondary schools: academic emphasis (AE), institutional integrity (II) and teachermorale (TM).

Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 609 participants in 103 randomly selected Israelisecondary schools: 103 middle leaders and 506 teachers working in teams coordinated by these middle leaders.Teachers rated middle leaders’ TL, while middle leaders and teachers reported OR and organizational health.After aggregation to the school level, structural equation modeling with bootstrapped indirect effects tested thehypothesized associations.

Findings – Middle leaders’ TL was positively associated with a dual school OR construct reflected inprincipal and faculty resilience. OR, in turn, was positively associated with AE, II and TM. The indirectassociations from TL to all three organizational health dimensions through OR were significant.However, the negative direct paths to II and TM should be interpreted cautiously as cross-sectionalassociations.

Originality/value – The study shifts attention from principal-centric accounts of school resilience by showinghow middle leaders may be associated with school organizational health indirectly through OR. It positions ORas the explanatory pathway linking a distinct leadership locus, middle leadership, to core dimensions of schoolorganizational health in a national context marked by recurring educational disruption.