Applying Need Theories To Understand Leadership Motivation in College and University Presidencies.

Abstract

This study applied need theories to understand leadership motivation in college and university presidencies. Eight presidents from colleges and universities in a midwestern and a southeastern state were interviewed. The participants had been in their present position for at least three years. Included were two leaders from research universities, two from doctoral-granting universities, one from a masters-granting university, and three from baccalaureate or liberal arts institutions. A thematic approach was used to analyze the texts of the interview transcripts. The results indicated that the presidents were motivated by a need for achievement, affiliation, power, esteem, self-actualization, and growth. The study suggests that understanding and fulfilling the needs of academic presidents may promote their work satisfaction and motivation to provide sustained executive leadership in their institutions. It is likely that presidents whose needs are not aligned with those of their institutions may experience a heightened sense of personal conflict, may find their work to be meaningless, or may create unnecessary problems for other members of their organizations. (Contains 34 references.) (MDM) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** tiN Applying Need Theories to Understand Leadership Motivation in College and University Presidencies William Agbor-Baiyee, Ph.D. Indiana University School of Medicine 635 Barnhill Drive Indianapolis, IN 46202, U.S.A. Paper Presented at the American Educational Research Association San Diego, April 15, 1998

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 2 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.