A STUDY OF ISSUES IN ADMINISTRATOR PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AT KENDALL UNIVERSITY.

摘要

Peformance evaluation of university administrators is a management practice which is gaining acceptance but also generating controversy. Declining enrollments, student unrest, faculty unionization movements, affirmative action requirements, and the increased dollar support necessary for the upkeep of physical plants all contributed to the call for appraisal procedures.;The objective of this case study is to identify administrator issues in performance evaluation which may be unique to the university context. Most of the available literature on performance evaluation focuses on methods and models for use in the university context without reference to the process as it has been experienced by administrators. The data presented and analyzed here represents an effort to identify and illuminate performance evaluation issues from the perspective of administrators affected by the practice.;An ethnographic model was used for conducting the research. Data for the case study were obtained from a simple random sample of administrators at the institution surveyed and from official university documents. A standard set of questions was used for in-depth interviews with sixty-three administrators who fell into the categories of Evaluator, Evaluated, Non-Evaluator, and Non-Evaluated. All administrators interviewed also filled out a sheet which asked for personal information to be used for a demographic profile of the administrator sample. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with pemission of school.) UMI.;In recent years, administrators in college and universities have become subject to formal performance evaluation. Often both the measurement criteria and processes for evaluation of higher education administrators have been adapted from those used in businesses and industry. This practice appears to be based on the assumption of similarity between roles of the professional in a business or industrial environment and the college or university administrator. Areas of controversy surrounding the use of administrator performance evaluation focus on the fit of the evaluation method to the context within which it occurs and on the dissimilarity of administrator roles in a diverse organization such as a university. Arguments put forth by each side in this controversy appear to rely on hypotheses rather than facts derived from analysis of performance evaluation implementation.