The impact of leadership practices on the organizational performance of federally funded community health centers

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between leadership practices and organizational performance. The research questions proposed focused on testing the relationship between the live leadership practices developed by Kouzes and Posner (1988b) and organizational performance of federally funded community health centers.;Organizational performance was determined using the nine specific performance measures established by the Bureau of Primary Health Care. Through an evaluation of the total population's performance measurement outcomes, the population was stratified into three meaningful subgroups (1) high-range performers; (2) middle-range performers and (3) low-range performers. Only organizations designated as high-range performers and low-range performers were selected for participation in this study. The leadership practice model developed by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner (1988b); and their Leadership Practices Inventory: Self (LPI) were used to test leadership practices.;The respondents for the study were Chief Executive Officers of federally funded community health centers whose organization wag designated as either a high-range performer or low-range performer. A total of 95 surveys were sent to Chief Executive Officers. Of the 78 responses, 76 were determined to be usable responses (90% response rate). Thirty-eight responses came from both high-range and low-range performers respectively.;Conclusions. Descriptive statistics for the five subunits of the Leadership Practices Inventory: Self were given. The data analysis procedure used for determining the significance between high-range and low-range performers relative to each of the leadership practices was an independent samples 2-tailed t test. The Levene's test for equity of variance was used to determine if the means were equal or if the relationship was significant.;The results of the research showed that there is no statistically significant relationship between high-range performers and low-range performers in reference to all five of the leadership practices. The five leadership practices included challenging the process, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, modeling the way, and encouraging the heart.;Recommendations for further research were provided.