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Organizational decision-making styles of Nebraska school board members and school superintendents
Abstract
Slezak (1984) has characterized five decision-making styles--avoiding, sharing, collaborating, accommodating, and competing--typically used in situations where differences of opinion exist. This study examined the perceptions of Nebraska school board members and school superintendents about the decision-making styles they use personally in such situations. The purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to identify the prevalence of each decision-making style among board members and superintendents; (2) to find whether there were differences between board members and superintendents in their decision-making styles; and (3) to find whether the decision-making styles of board members and superintendents differed according to the enrollment size of the school district. Data were obtained through a survey mailed to randomly selected Nebraska school board members and school superintendents from Class II, III, and VI school districts. The survey was a modification of Slezak's (1984) series of decision techniques that are used to determine decision-making styles when differences of opinion exist. The five decision-making styles--avoiding, sharing, collaborating, accommodating, and competing--were assessed by a set of items in which the respondents were asked to rate their agreement on a Likert scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Mean scores were used to determine any differences between and/or among independent groups. Decision-making styles typically used most by both school board members and superintendents was collaborating. A series of t-tests determined that school board members' mean scores were significantly higher than superintendents in the avoiding and accommodating categories. Significant differences tested by ANOVA and follow-up Tukey tests included: (a) school board members with small student enrollments typically used avoiding more than those with medium student enrollments; (b) school board members with medium student enrollments typically used sharing more than those with large student enrollments; (c) school board members with small student enrollments typically used sharing more than school board members with large student enrollments.
Subject Area
School administration
Recommended Citation
Keller, Mary Beth, "Organizational decision-making styles of Nebraska school board members and school superintendents" (1994). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9516584.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9516584