The Study On The Role Conflict Of The Deans At Chinese Universities

Deanship at the organizational structure of universities and colleges is an unique position which makes the dean plays a special role for the development of universities and colleges, Also because of its unique organization status, the deanship often being the typical context of role conflict. In this study, we used the conceptual framework of role theory, drew on the role of interaction theory and social system organization model, and formed the five factors of conflict analysis framework of the dean's role, From the perspective of organizational behavior study to explore the dean's role conflict in the process of the role-playing. On the basis of discussion the origin of the college and the evolution of the nature of the dean's role, the thesis focuses on the following issues: how is the role conflict of the deans at Chinese universities? What is the impact? What are the causes? And how to help the deans deal with the role conflict?First of all, this study explored the origin of the college and the evolution of Deanship. The colleges of continental Europe-style originated from the particular teachers corporation which based on the common research interests at the Middle Ages University. They were particular academic groups which committed to a particular topics, Its basis of delineation was resulting affinity that centered on a specific community of interest. And the college of British-style originated from the charitable Hall for poor students with free in the medieval universities, American college transplanted from the United Kingdom, and finally formed the American-style college system after the localization. Initially, the college attached to hospitals or monasteries, it did not commit the teaching activities, the teaching activities were at the public schools outside the college, College's main function was to provide students with moral and material on the asylum, The main responsibilities of the person in charge of the college was to provide students with accommodation facility and to act as the roles of a living caretaker and "in loco parentis". At the middle of the 13th century, a number of residential college beyond easy living features, began teaching activities, and at the same time the dean started acting as the complementary, supplementary role of teacher, With the transformation of the learning center to college, the college became the teaching center at 15th century.The dean has been entrusted to educators and administrators of double identity, Its nature has gone through from the student's guardian, the Chief academic administrators to Chief executive officer.The deanship is a unique middle management positions, which formed by the Interchange of the two-dimensional subsystem of the discipline subsystem and the bureaucracy subsystem. The dean plays multiple roles, he is the decision maker and the leader; Apart from representing the university, but also on behalf of his own college, he represents both of management system and academic system, the deanship is a typical situation with role conflict. In this study, we explored the deans' role conflict at Chinese universities and colleges with both the quantitative and qualitative research method, we found that the deans felt the middle-level role conflict, on the basis of the factor analysis for the deans' role conflict, two kinds of factors were summed up which were named the role expectations and role resources respectively, The former reflects the role conflict that is caused by the varied role expectations or varied roles requirements from different groups, the later one reflects the role conflict that is caused for the lack of resources during the role-playing, Dean's role conflict performed in the following categories: the role conflict caused by the different role expectations and demands; the role conflict caused by the Inconsistencies role expectations and demands; the role conflict caused by the mismatch between the Individual and the role; the role conflict caused by the conversion of role and the role conflict caused for the role expectations beyond the role responsibilities; the role conflict caused by the lack of role resource. The trigger mechanism of role conflict is the non-match and incompatible mechanism, which includes the incompatible roles between the managers and scholars; the non-matching between the individual and the role requirements; the incompatible role expectations; the non-matching between the role expectations and role responsibilities; the non-matching between the role resources and the role requirements.The dean's role conflict at the universities is influenced by multi-dimensional factors, such as environment, organizational factor, role and individual personality traits and interpersonal relations. At an open environment, people have multi-values, and their expectations for the dean are various, the dean's role-playing behavior is influenced by the following organizational factors: Heterogeneity of the internal subsystem in university, Multiple organizational culture, Multiple authority structure, various and ambiguous organizational goals, dual control by the bureaucracy and technical subsystems at the same time, Internal management mechanism and leadership style and the imperfect Internal system. These factors easily lead to role conflict. The role factors including the following aspect: inter-dependence between roles, cross-border job characteristics; role overload and the resource constraints, Some Individual factors such as academic-oriented job values, personality traits, the time for the deanship and interpersonal relations will also cause role conflict.As not all the conflicts have destructive function only, the impact of role conflict also has dual nature, it has a devastating negative impact, but also has positive and constructive influence. The negative impact of dean's role conflict include to bring enormous psychological pressure, to hurt the dean's physical and mental health; reduce the willingness to another term; to scatter the dean's energy; to impact on the achievement of organizational goals; to inhibit dean's enthusiasm to launch organizational reform etc. the positive impact of dean's role conflict include that it can push the dean to give more consideration to the expectations of different functional groups when he makes decision, to better integrate of different role expectations, the dean's role conflict can be a trigger to stimulate the reform of internal management at university, it can also help to improve the dean's ability to play the role. Among the various factors, there have both objective factors and subjective factors. The objective factors include environment, organization and the role factors, the subjective factors include individual personality traits and interpersonal relations. The objective factors indicate the inevitability of the role conflict, the subjective factors also note the possibility of the role conflict management. Dean in the process of role-playing takes some strategies, such as a compromise, communication, adaptation, neglect and exit respectively in accordance with the importance of the factors and individual control of these factors and the extent of the influence of role conflict on him. We can take steps to mitigate the role conflict of the dean and to promote the implementation of the role's function successfully at organizations and individuals levels. These steps include the following: Deepening the reform of the internal management system at colleges and universities to promote the level of matching between the rights and obligations of dean's roles; to improve the building of the role of deanship so that to promote the professionalization of deanship; Playing the role of the organizational culture in the process of integration and to reduce the degree of inter-organizational heterogeneity; Improving the sele ction system for dean to enhance the degree of adaptation between the candidates for the deanship and the role requirements; Giving more support for deanship to pay more attention to the development of inter-group relations.