Keywords

leadership, higher education, metropolitan universities

Abstract

Universities in the United States continue to evolve far beyond traditional concepts. While problems of an academic, economic, governmental, and educational nature beset any university, the metropolitan institution must grapple with these issues not as an individual entity but as a partner in a group of many players. Educational leadership for the American metropolitan university necessitates distinct and unique skills. This study sought to explore leadership behaviors of senior administrators at American metropolitan universities as conceptualized by Bolman and Deal's Four-Frame Model of Leadership (1991). Using Bolman and Deal's (1990) Leadership Orientations Survey (Self) instrument with an additional Respondent Information section, 407 surveys were sent to senior administrators at 74 institutions identified as members of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities. Of the 245 who replied, 25 of these individuals declined to participate. Thus, the total number of useable surveys for data input in this study was 220 (54.1%) representing a total of 71 out of 74 institutions in the response data. Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance were used to analyze data. Senior administrators in this study indicated that the human resource frame (76.9%) dominated all other frame choices. The structural frame emerged as second choice (57.2%) with the symbolic frame (55.4%) and the political frame (52.2%) in close proximity. Nearly half of the administrators (49.5%) reported multiple frame usage with the most frequent combination consisting of the human resource, political, and symbolic frames. Two personal characteristics, age and gender, influenced utilization of the frames. Younger administrators showed statistically significant higher mean scores than older administrators for both the structural and political frames. Female administrators showed statistically significant higher mean scores than male administrators for the political and symbolic frames. Job title, years as an administrator, size of campus, and location of campus in proximity to city limits did not influence utilization of frame usage for administrators in this study.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2006

Semester

Summer

Advisor

Taylor, Rosemarye

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

College

College of Education

Department

Educational Research, Technology, and Leadership

Degree Program

Educational Leadership

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0001231

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0001231

Language

English

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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