Faculty/university collaboration: Differential perceptions of shared governance, presidential leadership style and decision-making at a research university

The present study examined different perceptions associated with shared governance, presidential leadership style and effective university decision-making that were found in the current literature and confirmed or rejected these perceptions from a faculty perspective by deriving structural (conceptual) patterns through a quantitative data reduction technique. The study established the multi-dimensions of shared governance, presidential leadership style and effective university decision-making and compared those dimensions with former findings in the literature in an attempt to more fully understand the underlying and latent meanings in these areas.; The researcher surveyed all 831 faculty members at the University of Houston.; Three primary findings resulted from the examination of the influences of those domains identified by factors in each of the three constructs studied. First, faculty perceived numerous benefits which result from shared governance. Second, they reported low perceptions of their value in decision-making on their campus. And third, while they asserted that they did not share in decision-making as much as they wanted to, they remained unsure about whether or not decision-making was strategic by the president. In other words, although faculty felt that they did not greatly participate in campus decision-making given that they perceived shared governance as highly beneficial, they also did not fully exploit the potential outcome of their low level of satisfaction with shared governance and point to ineffective decision-making on the part of the president. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...