| TITLE | Demographic Influences on the Leadership Practices of Chief Faculty Officers During the Period of Reform |
| RESEARCHER | Apiradee Amnuckmanee Graduate School of Business and Entrepreneurship Nova Southeastern University Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation: April 2002 |
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to examine the leadership practices
of chief faculty officers in Thailand during a period of mandated organizational
change, to identify possible personal variables, and provide the first study of the
LPI with Asian respondents.
METHODOLOGY
Data were collected from a representative sample of 190
chief faculty officers from 13 faculties (departments) at Kasetsart University
(Bangkok, Thailand). The response rate was 69 percent (N=132). Respondents
completed a slightly modified version of the LPI, formatted with a seven-point
Likert scale (strongly disagree to strong disagree). The LPI was in English, as all
respondents are required to be fluent in English. The typical respondent was
between 46-55 years of age (65%). There were 68 men and 64 women among the
respondents. Forty-five percent of the respondents had graduate degrees and the
majority had post-graduate degrees (55%). Most of the respondents were
associate deans and department heads/chairs (61%), with another third serving as
deputy deans, and the remaining seven percent as deans.
KEY FINDINGS
There were no significant differences on the LPI by respondent
age or by years of experience. For educational level, those with post-graduate
degrees had significantly higher LPI scores than those with graduate degrees.
Analysis by gender revealed that women scored higher on Challenging, Enabling
and Encouraging than did their male counterparts. Analysis by current job
position or organizational level revealed that the higher the position, the more the
administrators saw themselves as engaging in the leadership practices of
Challenging, Inspiring, Modeling, and Encouraging.
In this study, reliability coefficients (Chronbach's Alpha) ranged between .78 for Challenging to .91 for Encouraging. The author notes that "since this was the first time that the LPI was utilized to collect date with a Thai sample, it is important to highlight the high reliability estimates of the measurement applied....indicates that the scale is more than adequate in terms of internal consistency of measurement" (p. 86). Factor analysis, for a five-factor solution, revealed an explained variance of 72.75 percent.
