In classical view organization and the supervisor expect the employee to obey strictly to the instructions about how to make the job. In these sense, employee initiative is neither expected nor supported by the supervisor because the best way to do the job is determined by supervisor and employee must perform the duty by this way (Taylor, 1992, 79-80). But contemporary paradigm accepts the unique value of the support of all employees to the job in all processes (Shafritz and Ott, 1992, 143).

Such a support by employee can be possible by an active approach to work. Personal initiative is an active performance concept requiring employee to set own goals in line with the organization’s; to have an active approach to work and to be proactive; and lastly to be persistent while overcoming obstacles (Frese, Kring, Soose, and Zempel, 1996; Frese and Fay, 2001).

Personal initiative is reported as positively related to self-efficacy (Speier and Frese, 1997). Self-efficacy is simply defined as the belief of the individual to his/her ability to organize and implement an action (Bandura, 1997, 3). Personal initiative has much been studied in on both public and private organizations’ employees (Baer and Frese, 2003; Den Hartog and Belschak, 2007; Frohman, 1997; Hahn, Frese, Binnewies, and Schmitt, 2011; Gamboa, Gracia, Ripoll, and Peiro, 2009; Stroppa and Speiss, 2011). But there is little knowledge about administrators’ personal initiative and no research on school principals.

In this study, it was aimed to analyze the Turkish public elementary school principals’ taking personal initiative and its relation with their self-efficacy. The questions answered in this research were as follows:

1. What are the levels of personal initiative of principals according to principals, vice principals and teachers?

2. Is there a significant difference between the opinions of principals, vice principals and teachers?

3. Does the principals’ personal initiative levels vary across tenure, student population and the number of teachers working in school?

4. What are the levels of principals’ sense of efficacy in managing the school?

5. Does the principals’ sense of efficacy levels vary across tenure, student population and the number of teachers working in school?

6. Does the sense of efficacy predict the personal initiative taking of principals?  

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