Making Progress as Leaders among University Staff

Abstract

This study examined the overview of how individuals in their respective teams operated and contributed to their organization. This study also identified the salient characteristics of how the respondents made progress as leaders in their respective faculties or departments towards identifying directions for innovative future practice through levels of professional training and length of service in an organization. The significant finding of this study is that it identified the salient criteria of progress making among the Malaysian university staff. Therefore, in general, this study could strengthen the role and responsibilities of Malaysian university staff as leaders. In particular, it will enhance the awareness among university staff pertinent to the leadership role towards their contribution to innovative initiatives. Moreover, the results of this study will be useful to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the university staff when contributing to innovative initiatives. This study employed the survey method purported to explore university staffs' views pertinent to the criteria of making progress as leaders. The instrument used for this study was adopted and adapted from the questionnaire of 'Are We Making Progress as Leaders?' by the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Stratified-random sampling was employed to determine the samples representing the population of lecturers in the study, involving 123 lecturers in one of the local universities in Malaysia. The main method employed to analyze the data is descriptive and inferential statistics. This study found that the respondents have the propensity in emphasizing customer focus criteria, followed by leadership. Thus, this indicates that customer focus criteria and leadership are the two areas which were perceived by the respondents to be of the greatest importance in making progress as leaders. Conversely, operational force criteria have the lowest mean. The findings of the study proved that significant difference at the p<.05 level occurred for four criteria namely Strategic Planning, Customer Focus, Result and Innovative category in terms of length of service. Likewise, in terms of levels of professional training, there was also a significant difference at the p<.05 level for Leadership, Customer Focus, Work Focus and Operational Force Criteria. Relatively, the actual difference in mean scores for levels of professional training was higher than mean scores for the length of service. In terms of relationship between the professional training level and the length of service among the university staff towards innovation, findings showed that there was only a significant relationship between the professional training level and the length of service of 4 - 6 years among the university staff (Likelihood Ratio= 28.500, df=12, p< 0.5). The rest of the groups based on the length of service showed that there was no significant relationship with the professional training level towards innovation. Moreover, results of the study on directional measures depicted that the relationship for the length of service of 4-6 years with professional training level among the university staff is quite weak with eta=0.07. Leadership criteria were perceived as vital criteria in making progress as leaders. This stems from the fact that good organisation management lies on the shoulders of the key leaders who illuminate the path to be followed by the group members.