Abstracts Category : Other

Leaders and Change| Leadership Behaviors And Influence on Subordinates' Reaction to Organizational Change

by Olivia V Valencic-Miller

Within the educational arena today, leaders face many problems ranging from shifts in governmental mandates and regulations, to increased expectations for teachers and administrators in order to improve academic outcomes. Combining facets of leadership behaviors with organizational changes, the educational arena has become more complex compared to recent decades. Therefore, the nature of the problem as outlined in this case is that there has not been adequate research done to examine how leadership behaviors influence subordinates reaction to organizational change in education. The participants for this case study included leaders and their subordinates from three different schools that were similar in size, demographic, and curricular change implementation. The standard form of the MLQ consists of both self and rater forms. The self-form measures the self-perception of leadership behaviors, and the rater form measures leadership behaviors perceived by others within the organization. For this case study, the self-form was administered to the leaders (defined later as assistant superintendents, principals, assistant principals), so the leaders were aware of their leadership behaviors. The rater form was administered to the subordinates. Additionally, qualitative methods, by means of face-to-face interviews, were used to gain insight in order to answer the research question. Using this single-case method, an extensive amount of time was used to interview both leaders and subordinates in order to understand their perspectives.