Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)

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Can External Accountability Affect Principals’ Ethical Leadership?

Authors
Changwen Zhou1, *, Wanying Liang1
1Department of Education, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China
*Corresponding author. Email: zhoucw346@lnnu.edu.cn
Corresponding Author
Changwen Zhou
Available Online 26 March 2026.
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_45How to use a DOI?
Keywords
external accountability; principals’ ethical leadership; teachers’ job satisfaction; China
Abstract

External accountability has complex impacts on principals’ leadership and the outcome of their management of teachers, but whether external accountability affects principals’ ethical leadership and its outcomes is unclear. This study explored the relationship among principals’ ethical leadership, teachers’ job satisfaction, and external accountability. Questionnaire surveys were conducted on 112 primary and secondary school teachers from 16 provinces in China using the Principal Ethical Leadership Scale, Job Satisfaction Scale, and External Accountability Scale. Regression analysis found that principals’ ethical leadership can significantly positively predict teachers’ job satisfaction. External accountability cannot significantly predict either principals’ ethical leadership or teachers’ job satisfaction, and it has no significant impact on the relationship between principals’ ethical leadership and teachers’ job satisfaction. Future studies should try to explain how and why the association of external accountability with principals’ ethical leadership and teachers’ job satisfaction in China differs from that with other principal leadership and teachers’ job satisfaction in other contexts by exploring mediation and/or moderation of the relationships among relevant variables.

Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)
Series
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
Publication Date
26 March 2026
ISBN
978-2-38476-551-5
ISSN
2352-5398
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_45How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - Changwen Zhou
AU  - Wanying Liang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/26
TI  - Can External Accountability Affect Principals’ Ethical Leadership?
BT  - Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 395
EP  - 408
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_45
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_45
ID  - Zhou2026
ER  -