| This study was conducted to investigate the extent to which certain leadership styles and selected personal and professional profiles of academic deans of graduate schools of education are associated with their leadership effectiveness. The study was also designed to explore experiences of the academic deans with the obstacles hindering their job effectiveness, and the strategies they pursue to overcome such obstacles.The data for the study was collected from 240 deans of graduate schools of education. The findings indicated that a majority of the deans were typically faced with a number of obstacles that their solutions were not within the boundary of their authority. Such obstacles included budget restrictions, imbalanced authority versus responsibility, and challenges with bureaucratic system. There was a common agreement among the participating deans regarding the importance of a number of factors contributing to their leadership effectiveness. Such factors included demonstrating honest and ethical behavior, resolving conflicts in a professional manner, taking responsibility for decisions, and creating a mutual trust atmosphere.A number of conclusions were drawn from testing the research hypotheses. Transformational leadership style was concluded to be positively and significantly correlated with the coaching and participating approaches to leadership effectiveness. Years of experience as a dean and years of teaching experience were concluded to be positively correlated with leadership effectiveness of academic deans. Males tend to more likely favor the telling/directing approaches to leadership effectiveness as compared to their female counterparts. Academic deans who served private institutions tended to use different approaches to leadership as compared to their counterparts in public institutions. It was also concluded that younger academic deans were more in favor of the telling/directing approaches to their leadership effectiveness. It was further concluded that Whites and Caucasians are more likely to use the selling/coaching approaches to their leadership effectiveness.Finally, based on the conclusions and implications drawn from the findings of the study, a number of recommendations were made to academic deans to help overcome the obstacles hindering their job effectiveness and several suggestions were made to future researchers to conduct additional studies related to the topic. |
