Self-Percieved Leadership Styles of Department Chairpersons in Baccalaureate and Higher Degree Nursing Programs in the Midwest

This study examined the self-perceived leadership styles of nursing department chairpersons in National League for Nursing accredited schools in ten midwestem states. Hersey and Blanchard\u27s Situational Leadership model was used as the conceptual framework for this descriptive study, and their LEAD-Self instrument was used to determine leadership styles of the 106 respondent nursing department chairpersons. In addition, the Scholarly Productivity Index (SPI) was used to determine the nursing chairpersons\u27 involvement in prepublication and research, publication, editorial, and other scholarly activities. The results suggested that a majority (61 percent) of nursing department chairpersons perceived themselves as having a participating leadership style. Most (36 percent) of the remaining chairpersons perceived themselves as having a selling leadership style. The participants perceived their backup leadership styles to be in a reverse order from their primary leadership styles with the selling leadership style the most frequently used backup style and participating the second most frequently used backup leadership style. The leadership styles of nursing department chairpersons from large nursing schools did not differ significantly from the leadership styles of nursing department chairpersons in small nursing schools. Likewise, the leadership styles of nursing department chairpersons from public nursing schools did not differ significantly from the leadership styles of nursing department chairpersons from private nursing schools. The leadership style of the nursing department chairpersons was not found to be related to scholarly productivity. There were no significant differences between the SPI scores of chairpersons from large nursing schools and those of chairpersons from small nursing schools. However, chairpersons from public nursing schools reported significantly greater numbers of scholarly activities than did chairpersons from private nursing schools. A majority of nursing department chairpersons in the study reported that they felt institutional pressure to engage in scholarly activities. Based on the findings of this study, the recommendation was made that studies of nursing leadership be included in nursing education curriculum at the graduate level for the purpose of increasing the understanding of leadership styles. Further study of the relationship between the nursing department chairperson\u27s leadership style and faculty scholarly productivity would benefit the profession