Individual and Organizational Effects Of Political Orientation Discrimination On Teachers In Schools

Discrimination is one of the most important problems that employees encounter in workplace and it stems from the prejudices that are manifested as a result of different treatment of the employees with the same knowledge, skills and performance. The aim of the study is to determine the effects of political orientation discrimination on both individual teachers and organizations. The study employed a phenomenologic research design. The sample consists of 12 teachers who stated that they were exposed to political orientation discrimination in their workplaces. The study found the following as the most common discriminations that teachers are exposed to: restraining the use of their personal rights, restraining the teachers from carrying out extracurricular activities, and assigning too much workload to teachers. It was also found that when teachers are exposed to such discriminations, they become hateful, angry and unhappy. Furthermore, discriminatory behaviors also have some individual and organizational effects on teachers. The most common individual effect was found to be distancing from those with different political affiliations and attachment to those with the same political affiliations. The organizational effects of discrimination were found to be the loss of motivation for work and attachment to the institution.