Understanding Crisis Leadership of Principals in Vietnamese Schools: a Study using Structural Equation Modelling

This study explores the relationships between school principals’ personal traits, leadership behaviours, and crisis leadership competencies within the education sector. Drawing on the perspectives of 589 teachers across primary, secondary, and postsecondary schools, it examines how teachers perceive and evaluate principals’ leadership qualities in the face of institutional disruption. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse five latent variables: personal traits, relationshiporiented behaviours, task-oriented behaviours, organization-oriented behaviours, and crisis leadership. Teachers responded to a 21-item questionnaire reflecting their professional experiences and assessments of leadership traits and crisis-related capacities. The model developed in this study accounts for 74.00 percent of the variance in crisis leadership. The analysis reveals significant associations between principals’ personal traits and all three behavioural dimensions, which in turn are strongly linked to crisis leadership effectiveness. Interestingly, the relationship-oriented behaviours of principals during times of crisis demonstrate the strongest influence, underscoring the central importance of interpersonal trust, emotional support, and relational leadership in periods of uncertainty. These findings reaffirm that leadership competencies are shaped not only by inherent personal characteristics but also by the capacity to adaptively respond to contextual demands.