POWER, INVOLVEMENT, AND EFFECTIVENESS IN SEVEN PRIVATE COLLEGES, ANDHRA PRADESH, INDIA

Power has been viewed by theorists in the conservative tradition as a positive force promoting order, peaceful coexistence, and effective collective action. Radicals, however, have regarded it as a disruptive force having dysfunctional effects on organizational structures, processes, and outcomes. This study contends that the conservative and radical viewpoints can be synthesized, provided that power is conceived as a non-normative continuum. Such a conception would permit the identification of several concrete power behaviors and the simultaneous examination and explanation of the differential effects of those behaviors. This study sought to examine the effects of three administrative power behaviors--coercion, authority, and influence--on organizational effectiveness. Subordinate job involvement was hypothesized to function as an intervening variable between the causal variables, the power behaviors, and the end-result variable, organizational effectiveness. Several relevant demographic variables were also included in the model. Seven private colleges in Andhra Pradesh, India, with a total population of 395 faculty members, participated in the study. Valid responses were received from 94.18% of the faculty members. Three research instruments were developed to measure faculty perceptions of power, involvement, and effectiveness. The content validity of these instruments was confirmed by a panel of experts. Two factor analytic procedures and the computation of Cronbach\u27s alpha provided accurate estimates of the relatively high levels of reliability and construct validity attained by the three measures. The Pearson r, part and partial r(\u272), standardized regression coefficients, path analytic effect coefficients, t and F ratios were some of the statistics used in the analysis of the data. The following were the major findings of the study: (1) Authority did not emerge as a significant power factor; coercion and influence accounted for 93% of the total variance in the data. (2) In the colleges studied, administrators\u27 use of influence was more prevalent than their use of coercion. (3) As hypothesized, coercion and influence were inversely related. (4) No significant relationship between coercion and involvement was found in bivariate as well as multivariate analyses; influence, however, related positively to involvement, as hypothesized. Path analysis results supported involvement as an intervening variable between influence and effectiveness. (5) The hypotheses that associated effectiveness negatively with coercion and positively with influence and involvement were confirmed. (6) Analysis of the relationships that existed between coercion and the demographic variables revealed that senior and high-ranking academics rated their administrators higher on coercion than their junior and low-ranking colleagues. Increase in faculty size tended to reduce somewhat the negative impact of coercion on faculty members. Women rated their administrators slightly higher on both coercion and influence than men. Roman Catholic colleges were rated higher on administrative use of influence, faculty involvement, and college effectiveness than non-Catholic colleges. Faculty members who were married reported higher levels of job involvement than the singles, the priests and the religious. Senior faculty members rated themselves higher on involvement and their colleges higher on effectiveness than their junior colleagues. (7) Barring a few exceptions, the demographic variables explained statistically significant but relatively small portions of the variance in coercion, influence, involvement, and effectiveness