A STUDY OF THE PERCEIVED IMPORTANCE OF MANAGERIAL SKILLS OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATORS

The purpose of this study was threefold: first, it was to identify empirical dimensions of job behaviors of educational administrators; second, it was to investigate the perceived actual importance and the perceived ideal importance of the selected managerial behaviors as relevant to administrative positions in public schools and postsecondary educational institutions; and third, it was to investigate the relationships between the importance of managerial skills and selected background variables.;The following conclusions were derived from the findings: (1) Four managerial skills of educational administrators emerged as follows: (a) Job management skill--an administrative dimension which refers to activities concerning decision making, problem-solving, and establishing administrative procedures. (b) Job management skill--an administrative dimension which involves communications activities and group interactions. (c) Organizational skill--an administrative dimension which refers to efforts to control fiscal and human resources. (d) Program advancement skill--an administrative dimension which involves commitment to education and concerns about learning and teaching activities. (2) Top educational administrators and line administrators perceived that employee orientation skill was the most important to their positions. (3) All population subgroups perceived that job management skill, employee orientation skill, and organizational skill were more important and should be more important to their positions than program advancement skill. (4) Educational staff administrators perceived that both job management skill and employee orientation skill were more important and should be more important to their positions than organizational skill and program advancement skill. (5) There was a significant relationship between the level of ideal importance of organizational skill and line versus staff administrative positions. Line administrators rated organizational skill higher in ideal importance than did staff administrators.;The instrument used to collect the data examined the levels of actual and ideal importance of job behaviors of educational administrators. Factor analysis, a repeated measures analysis of variance, and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data.