Perceived organizational toxicity and workplace loneliness among public-school teachers in one province of Türkiye: a cross-sectional statistical mediation analysis of organizational agility.

INTRODUCTION: Teachers' work is closely connected with communication, collegial support, coordination, and trust within the school environment. When these relationships are not experienced as sufficiently supportive or satisfying, teachers may experience loneliness at work. This study examined the associations among teachers' perceived organizational toxicity, organizational agility, and workplace loneliness, and tested whether organizational agility statistically mediated the association between organizational toxicity and workplace loneliness. METHODS: A cross-sectional correlational design was used. Data were collected through self-report scales from 301 teachers working in public primary and lower-secondary schools in the central district of Rize Province, Türkiye. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and bootstrap analysis based on 5,000 resamples. RESULTS: Teachers reported descriptively low levels of perceived organizational toxicity and workplace loneliness and a high level of organizational agility. Perceived organizational toxicity was negatively associated with organizational agility and positively associated with workplace loneliness, whereas organizational agility was negatively associated with workplace loneliness. In the structural model, the direct association between perceived organizational toxicity and workplace loneliness was positive and statistically significant (β = 0.444). The indirect association through organizational agility was also statistically supported (B = 0.097, β = 0.134, 95% bias-corrected bootstrap CI for B [0.042, 0.164]). Because the direct association remained statistically significant, the findings supported a pattern of partial statistical mediation. However, a reverse-order alternative model produced identical global fit, indicating that the cross-sectional data could not establish the temporal or causal ordering of the variables. DISCUSSION: The findings suggest that teachers' workplace loneliness may be considered in relation to both the relational climate and the functional response capacity of schools. Given the cross-sectional and self-report design, the results should be interpreted as statistical associations rather than causal effects.