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The Effect That Confidence Has On The Behavior Of The Principal And Superintendent As The School's Educational Leader, Thomas Thompson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative bounded, multi-site case study was to explore the effect that confidence has on the behavior of the principal and superintendent as the school's educational leader. The participants of this study were principals and superintendents of eight K-12 institutions in Northern Colorado. While the data addressing this multi-level epistemological observation are revealed through the narrative process, the framework for observing and codifying the research was derived from a qualitative multi-site case methodology where participants engaged in interviews and surveys, and whereby the researcher synthesized three research fields into one. Data were collected from the participant leaders …

Immigrant Diversity And Host Country Acculturation In Leader-Member Dyads, Monica M. Sharif

Open Access Dissertations

Leadership scholars have investigated the importance of leader-member dyads for several years. However, research has largely omitted the consideration of immigrant diversity with regards to leader-member relationships and outcomes in the organization. The US has experienced an influx of talented immigrants that are joining the workforce and, therefore, important to today’s economy. In a sample of two organizations, one based in South America, and another headquartered in Miami, Florida, I propose two models. One model examines the role of country of origin incongruence and LMX and the other examines the role of host country acculturation and LMX. Immigrants come from …

How Do Youth And Adults At A Rural High School Conceptualize The Role Of Student? An Investigation Of The Student Role Identity Standard At The Intersection Of Student And Teacher Perspectives, Joseph M. Zenisek

Dissertations and Theses

Over the past decade, engaging student voice has emerged as an approach to increasing meaningful student involvement in schools towards meeting adolescents' developmental needs for agency, efficacy, and sense of belonging. Central to student voice work is the re-creation of student-teacher and student-organization relationships, generating student identity roles that are fundamentally different from the roles traditionally allocated to students. Conventional concepts of student roles by both adults and youth can act as barriers to increasing student voice. The goal of this study was to develop a better understanding of student role identity. Applying a critical ethnography approach in the context …

In Search Of Social Justice Praxis: A Critical Examination Of Senior Student Affairs Officers' Leadership Practices, Ryan P. Barone

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As the highest ranking administrators in divisions of student affairs, Senior Student Affairs Officers (SSAOs) have the substantial opportunity to perform leadership in a manner which realizes social justice processes and goals. Framed by critical postmodernism (Tierney & Rhoads, 1993), this study uses educational criticism and connoisseurship (Eisner, 1976, 1998, 2002) to document the social justice leadership practices of two SSAOs. In depth narratives give rich descriptions of the nuances of social justice leadership as enacted by the SSAOs. Critical interpretation and evaluation of these practices is woven throughout the study. Themes relevant for the field of higher education in …

The Journey To The Top: Women's Paths To The University Presidency, Ann Marie Klotz

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The history of women in higher education reflects a constant battle for access and equity. Although the number of post-secondary institutions steadily increased after Harvard University opened its doors in 1636, almost two hundred years would pass before women students were allowed at some institutions. In the last 50 years, the number of women graduating from four-year institutions has dramatically increased. The same delayed access for women students to gain admittance mirrors the challenges that women faculty and staff have seen in obtaining leadership roles within higher education. Despite enrollment numbers that indicate women students are enrolling and graduating at …

Business As A Calling / Profit As A Virtue, C. William Pollard

C. William Pollard Papers

This speech was delivered at a Symposium on Corporations, Capitalism, and Christianity sponsored by The Center for Lifelong Learning at Windsor Park Retirement Community in Carol Stream, IL. In it Pollard considers the integration of business and faith, focusing primarily on how leaders must cultivate the humanity of their employees while simultaneously maximizing profit.

Beyond Biracial: The Complexity Of Identity Construction For Women With One Black And One White Parent, Roxanne Kymaani

Dissertations

In the United States, the post-Civil Rights Movement era changed forever the social perceptions about race and the self-perceptions of people who are born with mixed racial origin. Choosing to identify as mixed race in America inevitably leads to a racial cross-examination linked to America’s continued struggle with its racial heritage and the enduring legacy of a dominant discourse.

This dissertation focuses on the lived experience of women with one Black and one White parent. While subject to labels such as Black and White, Black, mulatto, biracial, mixed, or other, the central question is what do these women wish to …

A New Officer For A New Army: The Leadership Of Major Hugh J.C. Peirs In The Great War, Marco Z. Dracopoli

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

World War One brought dramatic changes to the officer corps of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) fighting on the Western Front. The heavy casualties sustained meant that mass mobilization at home had to take place in order to replace combat losses. As a result, the previously small, but professional British army was forced to transition into a large citizen-soldier army. This new force required not just new officers, but an entirely new leadership model. The formation and exercise of this new style of leadership is examined through the letters of Major John Hugh Chevalier Peirs, executive officer and later commander …

Examining The Influence Of Ethical And Authentic Leadership Behaviors Of Ncaa Division-I Athletic Directors, Raymond J. Cotrufo

Doctoral Dissertations

Leadership is one of the primary critical attributes of any enterprise. Leaders within and outside of sport establish a guiding vision that communicates the organization's purpose, culture, structures, systems, and goals to organizational members in ways that motivate them to work on its behalf. The current study sought to determine the role of athletic director (AD) leadership on the performance of NCAA Division I FBS athletic departments. A sample of 363 staff members across 55 institutions provided information related to the ethical and authentic leadership practices of their athletic directors, the presence of high-performance work systems (HPWS) within their departments, …

Leader–Member Conversational Quality Scale Development And Validation Through Three Studies, Guowei Jian, Xiaowei Shi, Francis Dalisay

Communication Faculty Publications

The continuing development of leadership research calls for measurement instruments that can tap into the communication process between leaders and members. The purpose of this present research is to develop and validate a Leader–Member Conversational Quality (LMCQ) scale—an instrument that measures the quality of conversations between leaders and members in the workplace. A series of three studies were conducted. Study I involved item generation and content validity assessment. Study II undertook the task of scale construction and reliability assessment. Study III tested the convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the scale. These studies resulted in a nine-item instrument with sufficient …

Breaking The Glass Ceiling? Gender And Leadership In Higher Education, Barret Mary Katuna

Doctoral Dissertations

Gender, work, and organizations scholarship that focuses on women in relationship to leadership roles focuses on gendered experiences including sexual harassment (Chamberlain, Tope, Crowley, and Hodson 2008; McLaughlin, Uggen, and Blackstone 2012; Zippel 2006), glass ceilings (Williams 1992; 1995), mentoring and collegial work relationships (Britton 2000; Chalmers 2001; DeHart-Davis 2009; Kantola 2008; Lorber 1994; Martin 2003; Ridgeway 1997; Wallace 2014) and the work and family balance (Acker 1990; 1992; Cha 2013; Damaske 2011; Gerson 2010; Hochschild 1997; Kelly, Ammons, Chermack and Moen 2010; Macdonald 2010; Williams 2010). While gender research shows that women face exceptional disadvantages in the workplace, it …

Perfect Timing: The Rise Of Women’S Political Leadership During Cultural Shifts, Christie E. Pearce

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

America has fallen behind in women's leadership, especially in politics. In the approaching era, there will be more viable female political candidates than ever in the past, but will the public be prepared to elect a woman to high office? Studies suggest that mentalities toward female leadership have taken a shift in a positive direction. The idea of what an 'ideal' politician must offer is more feminine in the modern era than ever before. In the age of social media, female politicians have opportunities to reach more constituents through social media in a more effective way than has been offered …

Leader-Follower Unity: A Grounded Theory Based On Perceptions Of Leadership And Followership Experts In The United States, Evgenia Prilipko

Theses & Dissertations

Leaders and followers are equally important for organizational success and development. While leadership training is widely available, very few training sessions and courses are offered on cultivating follower skills. It is essential to educate and transform individuals to become effective followers. This study identifies the most important characteristics to be exhibited by individuals in the follower role as perceived by followership and leadership experts in the United States. The theoretical framework used for this study is 12 follower attributes proposed by Antelo, Henderson, and St. Clair (2010). Seven scholars were interviewed: Ira Chaleff, Dr. Joanne Ciulla, Dr. Gene Dixon, Dr. …

Staff Perceptions Of Work-Environment Factors Affecting Morale In Southeastern Registrar's Offices, Rheanna Plemons

Dissertations

Studies on morale are prevalent in industry, healthcare, and public educational systems. However, morale studies are limited within higher education and focusing on the support staff at universities. This qualitative study used focus groups to identify themes among support staff in selected Registrar’s Offices in the Southeastern region of the United States. Institutions were chosen based on comparable enrollments and similar organizational structure. The researcher asked participants to discuss their perceptions on current morale levels in the office and how different work responsibilities affect morale. In addition, participants were asked to discuss motivators used by leaders and whether those motivators …

Decision Making And Creativity: A Qualitative Study Of Macarthur Fellows, Leslie Hennessy Ph.D.

Dissertations

This research study explored how eight individuals recognized for their creativity activate, develop, express, and sustain their creativity through decision making. The individuals were MacArthur Fellowship award winners. This prestigious fellowship is given to individuals who the MacArthur Foundation considers to be high-achieving and highly innovative individuals. The Fellowship recipients in this study were affiliated with either nonprofit or for-profit organizations, and all were founders of their respective organizations.

The specific goals of the research were to: (a) understand the details of participant decision making strategies and processes; (b) investigate if participants demonstrate consistent or different decision making strategies across …

My Creative Life: A Journey Of A Lifetime, Deborah A. Provenzano

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

ABSTRACT OF A PROJECT

My Creative Life: A Journey of a Lifetime

As I continue pursuing my studies in Creativity and Creative Thinking, I am developing, synthesizing, and practicing my creative talents; discovering all that I am and who I want to be; and further developing my creative leadership abilities. Now is the time for me to discuss what legacy I will leave or what contribution I will make in this world. This paper is a reflection of my personal philosophy on creativity, motivation, and engagement; and how I will make a difference in society as a Creative and Change …

Kentucky Politics : Where Are All The Women?, Carrie Mattingly

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This paper seeks to uncover the reasons for the underrepresentation of women in politics, with a geographical emphasis on the state of Kentucky. The research question explored is, “Why do so few women run for political office?” Surveys of women currently enrolled in college and phone interviews with women serving in the Kentucky state legislature are used to investigate this question by testing two hypotheses. First, the tendency of women to avoid running for office in the first place may be attributed to either weak recruitment of women or lack of political ambition among women. Second, a female tendency to …

Value Of Coaching In Building Leadership Capacity Of Principals In Urban Schools: A Case Study, Anita Renee Farver

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand how coaching support structures enabled and sustained leadership practices of urban principals. The study investigated how the intervention of coaching for academic leaders can serve as evidence based professional development for building leadership capacity. The central focus was on principals' perceptions of coaching engagements over time to identify recurring themes and essential elements of the coach-to-client relationship. With a goal of meeting 21st century school accountability requirements of standards and assessments, the urban district in this study implemented coaching for academic leaders who were selected to participate in the coaching …

Coaching Style Preferences Of Division I College And Professional Softball Players, Megan Diane Langenfeld

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe the coaching style and leader behavior preferences of softball players. The Leadership Scale for Sports (LSS; Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980) was administered to Division I college softball players and professional softball players from the National Professional Fastpitch league (NPF). Sixty-four softball players completed the Leadership Scale for Sport questionnaire (preference version), 52 Division I college softball players and 12 professional softball players from the NPF. Descriptive statistics revealed that softball players prefer Training and Instruction, Democratic Behavior, and Positive Feedback; players did not prefer Autocratic Behavior or Social Support. Follow-up univariate ANOVAs …

Distributed Leadership In Schools: Conditions For Success, Daniel Noble

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Teacher leadership has always been a necessary part of school dynamics. Through committees, union/administrative negotiations, formal and informal leadership roles, teachers play an important role in the growth and change of an educational institution. The purpose of this study is to examine teacher leadership through the perspective of distributed leadership theory; identify the conditions and components of both schools and administrators that support distributed leadership and identify essential steps to transform leadership practice to a distributed model.

This is a qualitative text analysis of current theoretical papers and relevant research on the subject of distributed leadership. The information was used …

Succession Planning In Family-Owned Businesses, Alexandra Burns Ma

All Student Scholarship

This study seeks to gain a better understanding of what the challenges are that family-owned businesses face as they attempt to transfer their business from one generation down to the next. The fact that family-owned businesses contribute significantly to the U. S. economy as well as the fact that they do not typically survive a generational transition make understanding what contributes to a successful transition important.

The Effects Of Leadership And High-Stakes Testing On The Retention Of Teachers, Amy Krohn Thibodeaux

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine whether principal leadership behaviors and the demands of high-stakes tests had an impact on teachers’ intent to remain in the teaching profession. Perceptions of teachers concerning the contributing factors that led to their intent to remain in the teaching profession were also examined. Factors included in this study were examined by the researcher in an effort to gain knowledge of what leads to teacher job satisfaction in the teaching profession.

The researcher used a quantitative survey instrument with a qualitative component. The survey instrument was created by the researcher and consisted of …

An Autoethnography Of Heart-Based Hope Leadership: A Matter Of Life Or Death, Cynthia Jeanne Kimball

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This qualitative, reflexive autoethnography explores my health journey over a span of 20 years and beginning with the 1994 diagnosis of breast cancer, through the 2012 diagnosis of an endothelial ischemic microvascular pattern heart dysfunction, and up to the 2014 writing of this dissertation study. The purpose of this study was to define the construct of hope-based action from the perspectives of nine participants and myself. As researcher-participant, I used reflexivity and personal narrative to describe the language and rituals of a culture of hope. The construct of hope was investigated from the perspectives of Snyder's hope theory (1994) from …

Leadership In Collaborative Governance: Understanding The Relationship Of Leadership And Collaborative Performance Of Local Departments Of Social Services Executives, Jennifer Behrens

Theses and Dissertations

Public administration agencies are increasingly called upon to collaborate across organizational boundaries as a regular part of practice. Leaders in the organizations are expected to deliver positive outcomes from collaborations. Common sense implies that good leadership leads to successful collaboration within public administration agencies. However, the exact link between leadership and collaboration continues to be a puzzle for both practitioners and academics in the field. This study examines the relationship of leadership and collaborative governance within a group of social services executives, who are specifically chartered to collaborate with one another and across organizational boundaries for successful delivery of public …

Revisiting Weber’S Charismatic Leadership: Learning From The Past And Looking To The Future, Ivana Milosevic, A. Erin Bass

Marketing and Management Faculty Publications

Purpose – Weber emphasized the informal structure, followers' power, and time in charismatic leadership; yet the extant literature either overlooks or underplays the significance of each of these facets. The aim of this paper is to revisit Weber's conceptualizations of charisma and illuminate these facets, thus creating new avenues for the contemporary charismatic leadership research. Design/methodology/approach – The focus of this research is on analysis of Weber's conceptualization of charisma. The analysis of selected quotes is grounded within contemporary discourse in order to illustrate how three overlooked facets may propel future research on charismatic leadership. Findings – By revisiting Weber's …

Technology Acceptance In A Mandatory Environment: A Test Of An Integrative Pre-Implementation Model., Mohanned Al-Arabiat

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Technology acceptance has been studied extensively within the IS discipline. The introduction of the technology acceptance model (TAM) has given researchers the opportunity to produce a vast body of knowledge; however, existing gaps within the technology acceptance literature warrant further investigation of these understudied areas. Namely, few if any have studied end users’ acceptance of newly implemented technologies within organizational contexts before end-users start using the technology. Additionally, leadership is one of the areas that has not yet been sufficiently integrated with the technology acceptance literature. The Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory with its roots in the social exchange theory offers …

An Interpretivist Case Study Of Leadership Transition In The Context Of A Southern Baptist Church, Ronald Tuck

Dissertations

This ethnographic study examined the experiences of key individuals involved in a senior leadership transition in the context of the church. Leader transition constitutes a significant aspect of organizational leadership theory, yet succession planning is often neglected in the context of churches. This study revealed that leadership transition is not a single event in the history of a church organization, but rather an evolution of events involving a multiplicity of factors and individuals. Narratives from five individuals directly involved in the pastoral leadership transition process informed the study: the search committee chair, the outgoing and incoming pastors, and two differently-located …

Leader-Versus-Member And Fair-Versus-Biased Categorizations As Safeguards Against Negative Effects Of Racial Diversity On Group Attraction, Ramadhar Singh, Naureen Bhullar, Krithiga Sankaran

Working Papers

The authors performed two controlled laboratory experiments jointly guided by information integration theory and social identity theory to investigate how two task-oriented diversities--leadership and reputation--safeguard against possible negative effects of the relations-oriented diversity of race on group attraction. In Experiment 1, the race of the team leader was crossed with that of the team member. As hypothesized, the leader categorization had a stronger effect than the member categorization, and group attraction was driven by both the in-group preference and the out-group derogation. In Experiment 2, the additional task-oriented manipulation was of the leader reputation as fair versus biased. As predicted, …

Use Of Task Clarification, Feedback, And Recognition To Increase Desired Behaviors Within An Organization’S Permit To Work System - Analysis Of Data Previously Collected As An Organizational Consultant, Tarek Abousaleh

Dissertations

The term ‘culture’ can be used to describe both a ‘social culture’ and a ‘work culture’. A social culture can be defined behaviorally as a pattern of overt and covert behaviors that are consequated by the verbal community and the contingency specifying rules that facilitate behavior independent of any first hand experience. It is this community that defines which behaviors are reinforced, extinguished, or punished. Similarly, a work culture can be defined as a pattern of overt and covert behaviors that are consequated by the work community (leadership, employees, self, etc.) and the contingency specifying rules that facilitate behavior/performance independent …

Gender Stereotypes In Leadership: How Threatening Are They?, Valerie N. Streets

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Women's persistent underrepresentation in management has prompted a considerable body of research to better understand how gender stereotyping contributes to this disparity. One possible explanation for the impact of stereotyping on women in management is stereotype threat (i.e., the risk of confirming negative stereotypes as true). Experimental research concerning stereotype threat as it affects women within the domain of leadership has been limited, with no published study specifically manipulating stereotype threat and testing effects on subsequent leadership performance. This thesis expands upon the current literature by replicating classic stereotype threat experimental designs and applying such a design to a leadership …