Author: Patrick S. Roberts

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

"The focus of this dissertation is on transformational leadership at publicly supported institutions of higher education in urban and metropolitan settings. A quantitative analysis was performed to study the perception of the transformational leadership skills of presidents of such universities. Overall, this dissertation will explore three subgroups of the university community--faculty, staff and administrators--and their perceptions of the transformational leadership qualities of their current university president. Transformational leaders tend to serve as guiding, mentoring coaches. They possess vision and charisma and they inspire employees to perform beyond expectations for the good of the organization. Bass and Avolio list four factors that define transformational leadership: idealized influence (charisma); inspirational motivation; intellectual stimulation; and individualized consideration (Bass and Avolio, 1993) (Table 1). Transformational leadership, when properly enacted, can result in greater organizational effectiveness, greater employee commitment to the mission and organization, employee willingness to exert extra effort, higher moral and motivational levels and emotional responses such as inspiration to excel and attachment to the leader (Stoner-Zemel, 1991). The intellectual offspring of Burns' transformational theory place emphasis on vision, values, empowerment, trust, culture and leader-follower relationships that comprise coaching, teaching and counseling. As leaders and managers confront the dynamic demands of the twenty-first century, it is believed that the twentieth century hierarchical, bureaucratic, managerial, controlling model will decrease in its effectiveness and its ability to energize and help to coordinate knowledge workers (Cleveland, 1985). An emerging conceptualization of leadership that includes the attributes of being transformational, visionary, values-based, developing, inspiring and empowering offers a viable approach to contemporary organizational coordination (Fairholm, 1991). This research focused on faculty, staff and administrators at 20 public urban colleges and universities in the U.S. (Appendix A), and detailed their perceptions of the transformational leadership skills of their presidents."--Abstract