Relationships of selection method, leadership style, and personality type among chairpersons in engineering departments.

摘要

The purposes of this study were: (1) to determine if there were significant relationships between methods of department chairperson selection, thinking/feeling personality type, judging/perceiving personality type, and leadership style and various engineering departments; and (2) to determine if there were significant relationships between thinking/feeling personality type, judging/perceiving personality type, and leadership style and method of college academic engineering department selection.;The review of the literature indicated that engineering types tend to be thinking types and judging types. Little study on engineering academics has been done, so the study was designed to determine if the engineering profile would be maintained, or if the call to academics resulted in a different personality type. There has been little research done to define preferred leadership style of particular groups of professionals, so this study sought to determine if there were such a preferred leadership style among engineering department chairpersons. Finally, the review of the literature suggested little research in determining prevailing methods of department chairperson selection; thus, this study sought to augment existent, sketchy details concerning academic chairperson selection and to determine if differences in selection process yielded different types of department chairpersons.;Personality type was determined by the Myers/Briggs Type Indicator; preferred leadership style was determined by the Hersey-Blanchard LEAD-Self Instrument; and demographic information on method of selection, term, length of service, age, gender, degree, registration, and experience was requested.;Chi-Square tests of independence were performed with the Yates' Correction for Continuity where needed. Results indicated that there was no statistically significant relationship between engineering departments studied and selection method, personality type, or leadership style. Findings also indicated that there was no statistically significant relationship between method of selection and personality type or leadership style.