A study of the relationship between the perceived leadership style of nursing chairpersons and the organizational effectiveness of baccalaureate nursing programs /

by Small, Terri Thompson.

A Study of the Relationship Between the Perceived Leadership Style of Nursing Chairpersons and the Organizational Effectiveness of Baccalaureate Nursing Programs Terri Thompson Small This study examined the relationship between the leadership frames of nursing chairpersons as perceived by the faculty and the organizational effectiveness of nursing departments as perceived by faculty and chairpersons. Bolman and Deal’s Leadership Orientations Instrument (Other), Cameron’s Assessment of Organizational Structures and Effectiveness in Colleges and Universities , and a demographic questionnaire were sent to 608 faculty. Cameron’s Assessment of Organizational Structures and Effectiveness in Colleges and Universities and a demographic questionnaire were sent to 63 chairpersons. The faculty and chairpersons were from 35 schools in the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Southern Region and were in the Carnegie classification of DR EXT or MA I level. A total of 240 faculty and 35 chair responses were returned. Descriptive procedures, Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficients, T tests, multiple analyses of variance, and one-way analyses of variance were used to analyze the data with respect to the research questions in this study. The findings demonstrated that chairs are perceived by faculty members as using no frames the most, followed by all four frames, single frame, multi-frame, and paired frame. Of the single leadership frames, faculty perceived chairs to use the human resource frame the most. This is followed by the structural frame, symbolic frame, and political frame. Statistically significant relationships were demonstrated between the single frame and all four domains of organizational effectiveness. Additionally, there were significant differences between the organizational effectiveness scores of low versus high leadership frame scores. Faculty and chair responses were significantly different in three areas of organizational effectiveness. DR EXT level chairs and faculty rated most leadership frames and most areas of organizational effectiveness significantly higher than MA I level chairs. There is currently a nursing faculty shortage. Nursing programs that are recognized as having good organizational effectiveness are more likely to attract quality faculty. Only one other nursing study has been done utilizing Bolman and Deal’s leadership frames. This study has implications for nursing education as the results have demonstrated that chairperson leadership affects the organizational effectiveness of the nursing program.