ROLE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL PRINCIPAL AS HUMAN RELATIONS AGENT:
CONTRIBUTION OF THE ROLE TO PRINCIPAL LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS
Greenfield (1991) has noted that the public school principal must play many roles: (1) managerial; (2) instructional;
(3) political; (4) social; and (5) moral. Several authors (e.g. Amey, 1991; Hutchinson, 1988) have characterized the principal's social role as that of being a human relation's agent.
However, the question can be asked: Can the public school principal effectively fulfill any of the just cited administrative roles without good human relations skills? This paper examines the principal's social or human relations role toward the objective of determining the extent to which the role of human relations agent is a defining characteristic of effective public school administration. In other words, the paper attempts to determine the relationship between human relation skills and effective public school leadership.
The central assumption of this study is that review of the existing literature on the role of the public school principal as a human relations agent will provide documentation justifying the assertion that this role is a pivotal characteristic of school leadership, and that without effective human relation skills, the public school principal will not be effective in any of the various administrative tasks to which he or she is assigned. This assumption can be translated to the following general hypotheses:
Research Hypothesis 1: The social role of the public school principle (defined as a role requiring the school principal to be a human relations agent) is a role which has a component in all other roles the principal is required to fulfill, and which may therefore be characterized as a pivotal definitional administrative role.
Research Hypothesis 2: If the public school principal is not a good human relations agent he or she will not be an effective public sch...