The Role of Work Experiences in College Student Leadership Development: Evidence From a National Dataset and a Text Mining Approach to Examining Beliefs About Leadership

Thesis advisor: Heather Rowan-KenyonPaid employment is one of the most common extracurricular activities among full-time undergraduates, and an array of studies has attempted to measure its impact. Methodological concerns with the extant literature, however, make it difficult to draw reliable conclusions. Furthermore, the research on working college students has little to say about relationships between employment and leadership development, a key student learning outcome. This study addressed these gaps in two ways, using a national sample of 77,489 students from the 2015 Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership. First, it employed quasi-experimental methods and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to investigate relationships between work variables (i.e., working status, work location, and hours worked) and both capacity and self-efficacy for leadership. Work location for students employed on-campus was disaggregated into 14 functional departments to allow for more nuanced analysis. Second, this study used text mining methods to examine the language that participants used to define leadership, which enabled a rich comparison between students’ conceptualizations and contemporary leadership theory. Results from HLM analysis suggested that working for pay is associated with lower self-reported leadership capacity, as defined by the social change model of leadership development, and that this relationship varies by workplace location and across institutional characteristics. The association between working status and self-efficacy for leadership was found to be practically non-significant, and hours worked per week were unrelated to either outcome. Results from text mining analysis suggested that most students conceptualize leadership using language that resonates with the industrial paradigm of leadership theory— leadership resides in a person with authority, who enacts specific behaviors and directs a group toward a goal. Disaggregated findings suggested that students who work off-campus consider leadership differently, using language consonant with contemporary, post-industrial scholarship—leadership is a dynamic, relational, non-coercive process that results in personal growth and positive change. In sum, the findings both echo and challenge aspects of existing research on leadership and working college students. Future research should explore off-campus work environments in greater detail, while practitioners and scholars who supervise students should aim to infuse post-industrial conceptualizations into on-campus work environments.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education

The Heart and Spirit of Transformational Leadership A Qualitative Case Study of Herb Kelleher’s Passion for Southwest Airlines

The notion of transformational leadership as developed by James MacGregor Burns has contributed significantly to a new consensus in the literature regarding the nature of leadership. Burns introduced the concept of transformational leadership, suggesting that leaders are individuals who transform their institutions by embracing competition and conflict, meeting the mutual goals of both leader and followers, successfully articulating their values to followers and drawing them into a common purpose and a shared vision, using power resources and politics to satisfy their followers’ needs and wants, and raising the moral aspirations of both leaders and led. While the contemporary literature on leadership has done much to further our understanding about the nature of transformational leadership, very few works provide us with case study examples of transformational leaders. Missing is an understanding of what leaders actually do in the process of leading followers and transforming organizations. The present study sought to provide a descriptive analysis of how one leader in charge of a major American corporation has shaped and transformed his institution. Through open-ended interviews and direct observation, this study examined Herbert D. Kelleher, the Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Southwest Airlines, a Dallas, Texas-based corporation that has a 15- year history, approximately 5,000 employees, and one billion dollars in assets. Key informant interviews were held with Kelleher and Southwest Airlines employees from different levels and a variety of positions within the corporation to determine the degree to which Kelleher personifies transformational leadership. This case study presents Herb Kelleher as an individual who has affected significant institutional change at Southwest Airlines by satisfying the wants and needs of his followers and by raising them to higher levels of motivation and morality. It was determined that Kelleher\u27s ability to successfully change his organization and meet the needs of his people is because he clearly demonstrates the qualities of transformational leadership

Exploring prosocial theories for teaching civility in baccalaureate level business communication

The paralysis of civility and the heightened acrimony in both public and private fora is considered a detriment to the health of a high-functioning and prosperous society. In the context of contemporary culture, the potential conflict between people with antithetical values and antithetical ideologies in a nonconsensual and neutral-ground locale is at a heightened level. When two people are obligated to each other in professional environments, they need to get along. Yet, as organizations have flattened and gone casual over recent decades, the boundaries of traditional politeness and respect have diminished (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Leadership and organizational environments are aligned tangentially with the social science of professional behavior, and the discourtesy shared between professional peers has become emblematic of incivility. The price of incivility for companies around the world is on the rise, according to Christine Porath (2013). Civil communication is essential for carrying out fundamental tasks for successfully managing and maintaining a business (Lazzari, 2018). The next generation is inheriting a complex world of incivility, and the need for soft-skill education aimed at the attainment of human harmony is worthy of investigation. There is a substantial corpus of literature on the concept of civility, even though there is no existing framework for it currently. However, as a result of investigating prosocial behavioral norms and drivers, there are numerous supporting frames (Grant, 2013a, 2021; Schein & Schein, 2018) and collective agreement that reference civility as a result. This research endeavors to speak to the contextual evidence discovering how the lens of contemporary frames could connect differentiated norms to civility for baccalaureate level comprehension and practice. As humans circumvent the world, the global implications of the study were significant as civility is a catalyst for healthy, diverse, and productive environments

Music Educators Who Take the Lead: A Phenomenological Study of School Leaders With Formal Backgrounds in Music and Experience as Music Educators

This dissertation contributes to the scholarly conversation on the effects that leaders and leadership models have on educational organizations and how to cultivate a diverse pool of educational leaders within a complex educational landscape. The researcher developed a three-tiered conceptual framework related to: (a) the components of effective school leadership, (b) musicians and their capacity to lead, and (c) the developmental stages of teacher-to-leader transitions. Using an approach rooted in hermeneutic-interpretive phenomenology, the researcher led seven participants—each music educators who became educational administrators—through a series of semistructured interviews to reflect upon their lived experiences during their pathway to leadership, connecting their roles as musicians, music students, educators, and lifelong learners to their self-professed understandings of the qualities and practices that lead to successful school leadership. Findings revealed a participant transition to leadership marked by a dynamic, nonlinear continuum toward the formation of leader identity and the practice of educational leadership, and centered on the discovery of three overarching thematic strands—competencies, relationships, and values related to change action—that highlighted the participants composite utilization of: (a) a range of observable, well-exercised leadership competencies, (b) productive, nurturing, and reciprocal relationships with a wide variety of educational stakeholders, and (c) idealistic individual and community values to guide transformative change. Findings support the development of leader capacity through a shared leadership model, the management of unintentional organizational impediments to the recruitment, training, and selection of effective educational leaders, and further research on unique teacher reference groups and their relationship to effective educational leadership

Strategies for Successful Healthcare Information Technology Projects

Without successful information technology (IT) implementations, IT managers and project managers (PMs) would fail to support their customers\u27 and patients\u27 technological needs. IT managers in healthcare organizations who improve IT project success rates will enhance the organization’s financial health. Grounded in the transformational leadership model, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies some IT managers in healthcare organizations use to deliver IT projects meeting deliverable requirements. The participants were 5 IT managers and PMs in healthcare organizations in a metropolitan area of California who effectively used strategies to successfully deliver IT projects for health organizations. Data were collected from semistructured interviews, archived company documentation, and project management documents from PMI archives. Yin’s 5-step analysis was used to analyze the data from which 5 themes emerged: defined scope, defined project plan, stakeholder management, communication, and the selected software development lifecycle. A key recommendation includes adopting agile or hybrid methodology to incorporate iterative development practices into information technology project implementations. The implications for positive social change include a potential reduction in healthcare costs to patients, improvement in the work environment by reducing employee stress related to failed projects, and a possible increase in funding of healthcare jobs and research to improve patient care

Improving Graduate Students\u27 Satisfaction with Academic Advising

Academic advising is associated with increased student retention and academic success. However, advising at an urban graduate school of education in Tennessee has been criticized for limited advisor availability, poor communication, and lack of advising knowledge. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to gain a deeper understanding of the reasons for student satisfaction or dissatisfaction and to identify techniques to improve academic advising. This study was guided by the conceptual frameworks of Kelly\u27s personal construct theory and Daloz\u27s psycho-developmental perspective. The research question addressed the perceived role of academic advisors that graduate students associated with academic success. The data were collected using 4 focus groups. Group 1 consisted of 10 graduate students; group 2 included 5 professors; group 3 was comprised of 2 advisors; group 4 consisted of 3 administrators. A thematic analysis was performed on the data, and member checking was used to improve data quality. Findings revealed that students were satisfied with the positive attitude of advisors, but were dissatisfied with advisors\u27 relational skills and knowledge of college programs. Findings also revealed that students, professors, and administrators were dissatisfied with advisor\u27s limited availability and lack of training. Based on these research findings, a 3-day professional development workshop for advisors was developed. The workshop included training about techniques to improve advisor communication skills and knowledge of effective advising practices. Implementation of this professional development workshop could bring about positive social change by improving the effectiveness of the advising program and the quality of graduates

Designing online learning for scientific writing: Collaborations, creations and transformations

This thesis is a multilayered approach to understanding the complex processes involved in designing, developing, implementing and evaluating online learning environments for academic writing in discipline contexts. The study is broadly situated in the field of educational design research (EDR). It brings together theories of pedagogical design, including those of multimodality and educational linguistics, with the practical implementation and evaluation of designs in context. From an applied perspective, the research addresses the problem of providing support for students to improve their academic writing, in particular the writing of the laboratory report genre, a key genre in science and engineering disciplines. For teachers and others involved in the design of online teaching and learning, the aim is to provide design principles to support the process of creating effective resources to teach academic writing online. These principles cover all stages of the process from design to evaluation. The thesis comprises three main stages which focus on the processes involved in the development of an online program for supporting students writing a report in Physiology, the Flexible Electronic Report-writing Tool (FLERT). The first focuses on the collaborations of the design team in creating the online learning resources within a ‘communities of practice’ framework. I use discourse analysis, based on the theory of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), to identify knowledge and relationship building among participants. The second draws on both multimodal social semiotics and SFL to examine how network and screen designs created for laboratory report writing programs in science and engineering have evolved over time. The third uses a multi- and mixed methods approach, together with SFL, to examine two cycles of implementation and evaluation of FLERT to assess how students have transformed their learning through their interactions with the program. The relationships among the outcomes from these three stages provides insights into: • the practice of design for learning; • the meaning making characteristics of the products of design for teaching and learning purposes; • the interactions of student users with the designed products and the influence of design features on student learning; • design principles, both general principles for online learning program design and those, at a more local level, for teaching academic writing online