The Impact of Role Conflict and Ambiguity on Academic Deans

The Dean's Disease: How the Darker Side of Power Manifests Itself in the Office of Dean

“…The "we-vs.-them" mentality that this conveys may occur for several reasons and speaks volumes about an applicant's self-view. Whereas, as suggested, new deans initially hold the belief that they are faculty agents, they soon realize that they must also serve as an agent of their university's central administration (Wolverton, Wolverton, & Gmelch, 1999). Knowing that any future higher level administrative aspirations, not to mention pay raises, are dependent on pleasing their superiors, all but the most independent deans soon fall into step, identifying with higher status administrators.…”

Community college academic deans: leadership frames and stress

“…These included gender, age, appointment, and years of experience. In addition, while a previous study found that role-conflict influenced stress levels of four-year deans minimally, this study found that the role-conflict of academic deans formed a large portion of the stress regression models (Wolverton, et al, 1999). In addition to the role scores, the deans' satisfaction, orientations, and some institutional variables contributed to the stress models.…”

“…In recent years, deans' role-ambiguity and importance have increased (Wolverton, et al, 1999). For example, Perkins (1991) noted that the academic dean holds a difHcult dual position at the college.…”

“…The leader's ability to handle stressful situations has seriously affected leadership ability (Gardner, 1990). Many researchers have called for more study of the causes and abatement of dean role-conflict, stress, and ambiguity (Sarros, et al, 1998;Vaughan, 1986;Wolverton, et al, 1999). Vaughan (1986) suggested that though educational leaders view stress as part of the job and handle it, there is lack of knowledge about how stress affects the leaders personally and professionally.…”

“…Other sections used in the dean's survey included instruments from the "1996 National Study of Academic Deans," used for studying leaders at four-year colleges and created by the Center for Academic Leadership at Washington State University (Sarros, et al, 1998;Wolverton, et al, 1999). One of these sections was a Dean's Task Inventory (DTI) that measures the typical responsibilities of the college deans; a Role-conflict and Ambiguity…”