Paradigm development and leadership style of university department chairpersons

This article develops and tests the argument that leadership behavior in organizations can best be understood within a contingency technology-environment model. The major premise of this model is that one of the most influential intervening factors between organizational performance and leadership behavior is either the technology that the organization utilizes or the environment with which the organization interacts. Building upon this premise and the work of Kuhn (1970), four hypotheses are tested concerning the relationship between the effectiveness of natural science and social science departments in American universities using factor analysis. The data supports the conclusion that differential leadership styles are predictable in different scientific fields.     

The education deanship: A further analysis

This article expands and extends the analysis of data previously reported in a study of the education deanship. The data were collected from national samples of deans, central administrators, department chairpersons, and faculty. Multivariate statistical procedures used were factor analysis with rotations, multivariate analysis of variance, and canonical discriminant analysis. The purposes of the retreatment of the data were to: (1) identify factors that were produced from the responses and compare them with the semantic factors described in the original analysis; (2) compare differences among respondent groups; and (3) assess commonality of responses within each group. New and unique factors, relationships, and group differences were found. Perceptions and acceptances of the dean's role were not uniform, with department chairpersons being the most heterogeneous.     

Language and academic leadership: exploring and evaluating the narratives

This paper draws on a study of academic chairpersons’ experiences in one research‐intensive university in New Zealand. The research goal was see if there were recurring threads in chairpersons’ narratives about their experience and management of conflict and challenge. The research revealed that one of the most pervasive stories concerned a set of beliefs about the nature of academia. This tale that was interpreted in a variety of different even contradictory ways was the notion that academia was or should be based on collegiality. This idea was often presented in conjunction with other stories about academia such as autonomy and professionalism and in opposition to the concept of managerialism. A second significant thread was a range of perspectives about the expectation that chairpersons should be managers of resources. This paper discusses these findings in relation to the literature and argues that we need to find new ways of expressing and enacting the values that the term collegiality attempts to capture and a means of integrating them into the current demand for performance, stringent resource management and accountability.