Senior-level Leaders Research Articles

September 2020 Placement Ads

September 2020 Placement Ads

A Contemporary Portrait of Black Women Student Affairs Administrators in the United States

Although Black women are the most represented minoritized group among U.S. higher education administrators, they continue to lag behind White women and men in terms of leadership in the student affairs profession, which may be exacerbated by their relative underrepresentation in graduate programs in education. Further, beyond generalized narratives about the aggregated experiences of Black women in higher education, little is actually known about the status and ambitions of contemporary Black women in student affairs. A secondary analysis of archival data extrapolated from a program evaluation survey provided preliminary insight into the educational and professional characteristics and aspirations of 401 Black women student affairs administrators who participated in the African American Women’s Summit. Findings revealed that the majority of participants had earned master’s degrees, were employed as assistant deans/directors, and were earning between $30,000–$49,999 annually. The most represented student affairs functional areas among participants were Housing and Residential Life Programs, followed by Multicultural Student Programs and Services. Most participants were employed at large, public, 4-year, predominantly White institutions. Further, despite hesitations about enrolling in doctoral programs and persisting in the profession, many participants still aspired to terminal degree completion and senior-level leadership. The data were interpreted in relation to existing research about the career pathways of chief student affairs officers and suggest that more specific strategies are needed to facilitate the promotion of Black women into student affairs leadership positions. While the findings of this study focused on a specific group of Black women student affairs administrators and thus should be applied cautiously, the portrait offered contributes to the scant body of literature about Black women employed in student affairs and suggests interim strategies that may be used to ameliorate their underrepresentation in the field.

Developing Competencies for Health System Impact: Early Lessons Learned from the Health System Impact Fellows.

Background:The Health System Impact (HSI) Fellowship program provides highly qualified post-doctoral fellows studying health services and policy research (HSPR) with opportunities for experiential learning, enriched core competency development and mentorship from senior-level leaders within health system organizations. Its overall aim is to prepare post-doctoral fellows with the research and professional skills, experiences and networks to make meaningful and impactful contributions in careers in academic and applied health system settings.Objective:This study examined whether this HSI Fellowship program has contributed to the development of enriched core competencies in HSPR.Methods:A competency assessment tool was developed and administered to the 46 fellows and their health system and academic supervisors from the inaugural HSI Fellowship cohort. Fellows' self-assessments at baseline, three months and 12 months were analyzed, along with supervisors' assessments at three and 12 months. Descriptive analyses were used to examine competency development over time. Differences by gender and between supervisor and fellow ratings were analyzed.Results:HSI fellows' self-assessments indicate that they strengthened their skills in all 10 enriched core competencies. Supervisors' assessments of the fellows' competencies also improved from baseline to 12 months. Gender differences at baseline disappeared by the 12-month assessment.Conclusion:The HSI Fellowship provides an opportunity to develop the full suite of enriched core competencies, particularly in competency domains that are not currently emphasized in HSPR doctoral curriculum.

Is there such a thing as feminine leadership? Being a leader and not a man in the hospitality industry

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine and discuss whether women executives in the hospitality industry in Hong Kong adopt a feminine, masculine or gender-neutral approach to leadership.Design/methodology/approachThis study focuses on women with positional power in senior-level leadership roles within the hospitality and tourism industry in Hong Kong. A qualitative approach was taken to capture the multiple dimensions of these female executive’s leadership orientations. The participants included 24 women executives.FindingsParticipants’ representations show that women have a multitude of leadership styles that operate on three continua. Not all women executives display leadership orientations that adhere to their indigenous culture values. Individual differences or differences related to the organizational culture are still relevant.Research limitations/implicationsA low number of women in leadership positions in Hong Kong limited the selection process of participants. There might be a selection bias based on that the participants volunteered to participate in the research study and some declined. Findings are based on participants’ memory to reflect on their leadership styles.Originality/valueBecause of the traditional and conventional definitions of leadership, women leaders might feel that they should behave in a masculine way to be taken seriously as a leader. There is a need to understand whether women executives today manage to defeat these stereotypes and comfortably display a feminine approach to leadership. A culture that values and leverages feminine approaches in addition to masculine approaches is likely to have higher engagement and retention of women.

The Secret Sauce: How Developmental Relationships Shape the Leadership Journeys of Women Leaders in Christian Higher Education

Although women are now graduating in greater percentages then men at all degree levels—associate through doctorate—the senior-level leadership on most postsecondary campuses in the United States continues to be predominantly White and male. Numerous internal, institutional, and systemic barriers have been identified that hinder women from aspiring to leadership and advancing into senior-level roles. However, new streams of research in the leadership literature are addressing the motivations, encouragers, and discouragers that influence women’s leadership aspirations and experiences, including a growing body of scholarship focused on the process of leadership identity development rather than simply leadership development. This article presents the relevant literature and discusses the findings of interviews with 30 emerging and current women leaders in the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities; the interview questions focused on the extent to which various kinds of developmental relationships (specifically mentoring, coaching, and sponsorship) have been experienced by the participants. Three primary themes emerged from the data analysis of developmental relationships vis-à-vis the participants’ leadership journeys: (a) the value of having a network of influential relationships was key in the leadership journey; (b) the perceived benefits of distinct developmental relationships, either present or desired; and (c) the contribution of developmental relationships in navigating women leaders’ professional challenges. Although many of the 30 participants reported having benefited from mentoring of various types in the past, only a few reported having been coached or sponsored. Notably, such developmental relationships were not only desired but also viewed as potentially critical to professional advancement. Recognizing that the influence of developmental relationships (particularly coaching and sponsorship) in later career stages merits greater research attention, this article proposes a slightly modified version of a Women’s Leadership Development Model in which developmental relationships are recognized as a motivator for women to aspire to or step into leadership, with coaching and sponsorship playing a larger role in the later stages of women’s career development.

A 7 Cs model of effective service leadership

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify attributes and practices that are salient for effectiveness in middle- and senior-level service leadership positions.Design/methodology/approachCritical incident interviews were conducted with 17 key informants, who were service leaders in various service sectors in Hong Kong, and with ten stakeholders.FindingsGrounded theory analysis generated a 7 Cs model with seven categories of service leadership attributes and practices: character, choreography, care, creativity, charisma, collaborating and competence self-improvement, and 24 constituent concepts. There was concordance between pairs of key informants and stakeholders.Research limitations/implicationsFurther research could investigate the impact on frontline service leaders’ performance if one or more of the 7 Cs are perceived to be absent or deficient among leaders at more senior levels, and whether there are acceptable substitutes for particular Cs.Practical implicationsThe 7 Cs model identifies service leadership attributes and practices across diverse sectors.Originality/valueThe 7 Cs model provides a map for orienting the developmental preparation of individuals, who are aspiring to become middle- and senior-level leaders in economies that have become highly dependent on service.

From individual behaviour to system weaknesses: The re-design of the Just Culture process in an international energy company. A case study

The Just Culture (JC) process, originally introduced by James Reason (1997), remains a popular framework helping managers to decide how to respond in cases of human error or non-conformance which contributed to an incident.Our organisation started using Reason's framework in 2001. However, over the years, the available evidence indicated that the original design contributed to the misapplication of the JC process and in some cases led to outcomes not aligned with the intent. Several challenges associated with the framework itself, as well as its application, led to a re-design of the Just Culture process. This re-design moved away from Reason's original framework towards one informed by recent studies in cognitive and social psychology, organisational justice, systems thinking and incident causation.This paper describes how the middle level and senior level leaders, in the Upstream operations function, applied the Action Research approach to systematically understand the challenges associated with using a JC framework and addressed them through a modernised JC process.Our “re-designed” JC process consists of eight questions developed to be used after an incident investigation. These questions were intended to provide a lens through which leaders could better understand how to apply the findings and recommendations, and to resolve any underlying latent conditions that contributed to non-conformances, and to attribute accountability, if relevant. The cases are recorded in an electronic database and analysed periodically by our subject matter experts.353 Just Culture cases were completed as of the end of October 2016. A summary of the analysis showed that approximately 90% of cases were attributed to system-level issues.The authors used the results of the Just Culture analysis to help shift the mind-set in the organisation and reinforce managers' understanding that most non-conformant behaviours are influenced by system weaknesses; strengthening employees' trust by emphasising that this is not a disciplinary tool; and encouraging a speak-up culture where the front-line staff feel able to raise concerns when non-conformances or error-producing conditions are observed.

Redesigning the Education Doctorate for Community College Leaders: Generation, Transformation, and Use of Professional Knowledge and Practice

This paper describes the redesign of a community college executive leadership doctoral program that seeks to develop senior-level leaders. The paper provides how the redesign was intentionally aligned with the CPED principles and specifically the sixth principle. The paper sought data from students, faculty and other documents to gain an insight into the impact of aligning the program with principles and design concepts. The paper suggests that it is important for this program to integrate examples from practice and practitioners, include job shadowing experiences for students and faculty, and ensure there are active learning activities that are relevant to the students. The paper includes an overview of the program redesign as well as reflection on the first iteration of the new coursework through student's voice, faculty feedback, and a discussion of lessons learned.

Higher Education Crises: Training New Professionals for Crisis Management

With events such as natural disasters and active shooters occurring on college campuses, crisis management has become a required function of higher education administrators. Training and planning efforts are often limited to senior level leaders who will manage the campus response in a large-scale incident. Yet small-scale incidents are more likely to occur, placing new professionals in the role of frontline responders without adequate training. This qualitative study shares administrator experiences with crisis situations and what they recommend for inclusion in training new professionals to respond.

Managing Knowledge in Transitions: Experiences of Health Care Leaders in Succession Planning.

Effective and efficient methods of succession planning are integral to the success of organizations across the health care system. We explored current health organizations' senior leadership transition processes. Participants were in senior level leadership and decision-making positions in hospitals within Ontario, Canada. Most of the participants did not have formal transition plans and instead relied on the human resources department to plan for succession. We discuss these processes through three themes: (1) preplanning for a transition, (2) the transition process, and (3) barriers to successful transitions. The results of this study confirm the ideas that leadership style combined with experience and personal preferences dominates a leader's onboarding process. Like any complex organizational process, transitions ought to be iterative, flexible, and in line with the needs of individuals, the organizations, and the context. This research also provides further analysis around the broader contextual and cultural issues inherent to succession planning.

Impacting ethnic marketing practices in the pharmaceutical industry: A qualitative study of transformative African American women leaders

The pharmaceutical industry reports itself to be in need of transformation in light of its maturity and complexity. Additionally, marketing practices within healthcare have shifted from mass market approaches to approaches that recognise the value of targeted markets, inclusive of ethnic markets such as the African American market. This qualitative study includes semi-structured interviews with eight African American women mid-level and senior-level leaders in three global pharmaceutical companies. Their experiences are reviewed in the context of the seven tenets that comprise the transformative leadership model, and examples of their impact on ethnic marketing practices within the industry are discussed. Marketing-related activities specifically mentioned include clinical trial recruitment, targeted promotional activities and sales team diversity. This research adds to the body of knowledge relative to ethnic marketing considerations for the pharmaceutical industry and has implications for both scholars and practitioners regarding the importance of diverse and transformative leadership, and marketing practices within the pharmaceutical industry.

Middle managers’ role in quality improvement project implementation, are we all on the same page? – A review of current literature

Middle managers within healthcare hold a unique position between senior leadership and frontline staff, and may hold a pivotal function in the implementation of quality improvement (QI) projects. This review aims to explore what is known about healthcare middle managers’ role in implementing QI initiatives, and to determine if consensus around their role exists amongst middle managers and other healthcare stakeholders alike. A review of the current literature, limited to the English language was undertaken using the databases CINAHL (ESBSCO), PsychInfo, Cochrane, Medline (OVID) and Google Scholar. Of the 2473 articles the search yielded, data was extracted from 16 articles that met the authors’ inclusion criteria. There is scarcity of empirical literature surrounding healthcare middle managers’ role in project implementation, and limited consensus in regards to role descriptors is identified. There is general agreement that middle managers have a role in mediating between strategy and day-to-day activities, acting as the primary supporter of frontline staff, and serving as a knowledge broker. However, disagreements about their role are apparent with discrepant perceptions held by the broader stakeholder group (physicians, frontline staff, and senior level leadership) and amongst middle managers themselves. A limited understanding exists around the specialized role of middle managers within this context, and could be a contributing barrier to QI project implementation. It is suggested that a lack of role clarity amongst middle managers is evident and may be attributed to various contexts and implementation strategies used in quality improvement (QI).

The CNO as Chief Influence Officer

I have the privilege of working with a team of 20 nurse leaders in a health care system that is undergoing change at all levels. In the past 18 months, they have experienced senior-level leadership transitions; new, high-profile community alliances; major service expansions; unpredictable census spikes; and the opening of a new hospital. They have also endured significant staff shifts and some reductions in force.

Women in Leadership: The Future of Christian Higher Education

ABSTRACTThis article presents a discussion of the gender imbalance in senior-level leadership roles within the U.S. member institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), highlighting data across the last two decades. The underrepresentation of women in this sector is placed within a theological context and is compared with other sectors of U.S. higher education. Insights from the secular literature provide an introductory context for the article's presentation of the data. Although the CCCU member institutions collectively serve a student body that is 60% female, a 2015 analysis of individuals holding “vice president” or higher titles (e.g., senior vice president, executive vice president) revealed that women held fewer than 30% of those employed in any particular leadership role (e.g., chief academic officer) and only slightly over 20% of all senior leadership roles. Notably, when a national study compared the leadership composition of 1,481 evangelical non-profit organizations with their secular counterparts, the representation of women on boards and senior leadership teams was found to be about half of that found in the secular nonprofits (Reynolds, 2014). Although Christian colleges and universities have an opportunity to set the standard within higher education for identifying, encouraging, and deploying the gifts of individuals across racial and gender lines, a variety of environmental and internalized barriers hinder the affirmation and development of women's leadership identity and advancement. Five recommended action steps conclude the article, with a call to reimagine Christian higher education as being places of learning characterized by fully affirming and developing the potential of all within their span of care.

Correctional Executives’ Leadership Self-Efficacy and Their Perceptions of Emotional Intelligence

Correctional leadership is virtually an unexamined category, lacking literature regarding what is necessary to be a successful correctional executive. This quantitative study involved examining a leadership model of the relationship between emotional intelligence and leader self-efficacy perceptions among correctional executives and senior-level leaders. A convenience sampling of 112 correctional leaders from across the US participated in the study. Participants were asked to complete the WLEIS (Wong & Law Emotional Intelligence Scale) and the Leader Efficacy Questionnaire (LEQ). A correlation and Multivariate Analysis of Variance Analyses (MANOVA) were subsequently conducted. The study findings yielded a statistically significant difference among leaders’ perceptions of their utilization of emotional intelligence and leader self-efficacy in the work environment. The study findings further suggest that gender is predictive across the instrumentation models for this study, with women exhibiting higher levels of emotional intelligence, self-emotional appraisal, use of emotion, leader self-efficacy, and leader self-regulation efficacy.

Perspectives from the Field: Bringing Nurse Leaders into the Classroom

Leadership is a vital component of nurses' careers and baccalaureate nursing programs are required to include leadership competencies in undergraduate nursing education. To design learning experiences that emphasize professional identity formation, nurse leaders were invited as guest speakers in a senior-level didactic leadership course, but scheduling often interfered with participation. To inspire students and maximize nurse leaders' time, recorded video was investigated as a solution. Following videotaped interviews with nurse leaders, a 10-minute video was produced and shown to students in a nursing leadership course. The video project was evaluated for feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and usefulness as an instructional tool for empowering nursing students.

Conceptions of Power Among Senior Women Administrators at Liberal Arts Colleges in the Upper Midwestern United States

Women are underrepresented in senior-level leadership positions in higher education institutions, and their experiences are underrepresented in research about leadership and power in higher education. This qualitative study engaged women senior administrators at liberal arts colleges in the Upper Midwestern United States to better understand how their intersecting identities mediate their enacted leadership. Data were collected from eight women senior administrators at liberal arts colleges in the Upper Midwestern United States via a preliminary questionnaire, document review, in-depth one-on-one interviews, and a day of observation with each participant. For this paper, I investigated how the participants perceived their own power within the campus community. Data analysis using the constant comparative method revealed participants’ conceptions of power, their discomfort with the word power, and the ways they saw their power as mediated by their identities.

Misconceptions Of Employee Turnover: Evidence-Based Information For The Retail Grocery Industry

Employee turnover rates are higher in the retail grocery industry in comparison to other industries. This level of turnover produces demoralizing effects on the grocery industrys profitability. The lack of evidence-based information regarding causes of employee turnover may result in senior level leadership within the retail grocery industry formulating retention strategies based upon conjecture. Basing retention strategies on turnover misconceptions may be costly and actually fail to reduce turnover. For these reasons, this study sought to fill the knowledge gap by providing the grocery industry with evidence-based information on the topic of employee turnover. In an effort to provide a better understanding of the factors that support an engaged workforce, data from 151 frontline retail grocery employees gathered perceptions of their work environment, burnout, and turnover intentions. The participating employees represented one grocery chain in Western New York. The key finding was that value conflicts have a strong, statistically significant relationship with cynicism, which in turn increases the likelihood for employee turnover. Making use of this evidence-based information may help in creating strategies for a more engaged workforce and retaining the most valuable employees.

Learning by leading

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe an innovative senior-level leadership development programme in housing association, East Thames Group, which was designed to build the capabilities needed to lead the organisation through a transformation in its culture and working practices. The programme engaged leaders in navigating and shaping culture change in East Thames and in so doing significantly enhanced their capacity for self-awareness, decision making and collaboration. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a descriptive narrative of the leadership development process from its inception in November 2011, through the experience of two cohorts comprising 40 senior managers during 2012, to the formal conclusion of the process in January 2013. The narrative employs a modified version of the hero's journey to describe the process of individual and organisational development during this period. Findings – The paper proposes an effective alternative to prescriptive, competency-based, leadership programmes which is grounded instead in a problem-solving approach where capacity-building results from participants acting on “wicked” organisational problems and learning by leading. Research limitations/implications – Learning by leading is a flexible, highly contextualised alternative to programmatic approaches to leadership development. The challenges faced by East Thames will be familiar to leaders in both public and private sectors. This methodology is relevant wherever the strategic goal is a dual transformation in organisation performance and leadership capacity. Practical implications – The paper includes a model of leadership development based on five stages of the hero's journey. These design principles translate into a structure – a container – where leaders can think, act and learn together in order to decide how and where to intervene in their situation to make a difference. Originality/value – The paper presents a rare longitudinal description of a senior level leadership development process which used a complex organisational problem as a vehicle for both leadership agency and leadership learning.

A Study on Effectiveness of Leadership in a Public Sector Organization

As the global economy gathers pace, more public sector organizations are realizing that their main assets are their people and that remaining or becoming competitive depends increasingly on the development of a highly skilled workforce. This requires trained and committed leaders but they, in turn, need the leadership of highly effective managers and the support of other senior and middle level leaders and managers. No single leadership is effective in all situations. Many different theories of leadership have been developed through years of research with groups and organizations. It explains that the style a leader chooses depends mostly upon the group's level of readiness. That is, how willing and able the members are to take responsibility as a group. The present research article aims at analyzing the effectiveness of leadership in the public sector. The period of the study was from 2010-2011. The effectiveness of leadership in a public sector insurance giant was analyzed by working out the weighted mean and factor analysis.