Leadership styles of academic deans and department heads: university dons' perspectives on how they affect their job satisfaction
International Journal of Educational Management
ISSN: 0951-354X
Article publication date: 11 August 2023
Issue publication date: 15 August 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Leadership has been recognised as a critical factor for employees' job satisfaction. However, much remains to be learned about how university academics who work in developing country contexts perceive their head of departments (HoDs) and deans' leadership styles and how such leadership styles influence their job satisfaction. Therefore, extending earlier research on higher education leadership, this study was pioneered to examine deans' and heads of departments' leadership styles and how such leadership styles influenced their job satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employed an exploratory research design to draw on data from in-depth interviews with university academics sourced from two private and two public universities. Participants constituted fifteen academics (N = 15) from the studied universities. The collected data from interviews were transcribed verbatim and subjected to thematic analysis.
Findings
The findings revealed that overall, academics perceived their HoDs and deans as employing both transformational and transactional leadership styles. As such, both styles of leadership influenced academics' job satisfaction in diverse ways although the transformational leadership style appeared to be the most dominant in influencing academics' job satisfaction.
Practical implications
The article highlights the need for university managers (i.e. heads of departments and deans) to flexibly employ preferred leadership styles to achieve job satisfaction among academics.
Originality/value
From the theoretical point of view, this article contributes to expanding the earlier research by showing how academics' perceptions of leadership styles employed by their academic leaders shape their job satisfaction.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable criticism and constructive recommendations, which helped to considerably improve this piece of work. Finally, the author would like to express his special thanks to all the academics from Tanzanian universities who took part in this study.
Since acceptance of this article, the following author(s) have updated their affiliations: Samson John Mgaiwa is at the School of Education, Deakin University, Melbourne Australia.
Citation
Mgaiwa, S.J. (2023), "Leadership styles of academic deans and department heads: university dons' perspectives on how they affect their job satisfaction", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 37 No. 5, pp. 1088-1103. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-09-2022-0367
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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