Reported managerial practices and leadership importance of senior woman administrators at NCAA institutions

• Main Author: Myers, Mary C
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-1998
• Subjects: Educational administration; Management; Physical education; School administration; Womens studies
• ISBN: 0599319364; 9780599319363

According to Luther Gulick, the first step to improving an organization was to make sure the manager clearly understood their responsibilities. Gulick posed that the administrative responsibilities of any manager and the functions which must be satisfied by an organization were planning, organizing, staffing, directing, reporting, and budgeting. (Lutrin and Settle, as cited in Rabin, Humes, and Morgan, 1984). The purpose of this study was to compare the managerial practices of NCAA Division I and Division II senior woman administrator's (SWAs) in intercollegiate athletics. A second purpose was to determine SWAs leadership importance across NCAA Division I and Division II institutions. A 53-item questionnaire, called the Athletic Management Profile Survey (AMPS) was developed for this purpose and divided into six sections: demographics of respondents, leadership importance, management functions, management roles, management skills, and general information. A Likert Scale was used as the item response format. The item response options measuring Leadership Importance ranged from “extremely important” (5) to “not important” (1). General Information item responses ranged from “strongly agree” with the highest score of 6 to “strongly disagree” with the lowest score of 1. Item responses measuring Managerial Function and Managerial Role ranged from “always” as the highest score of 5 to “never” with the lowest score of 1. Item responses measuring Managerial Skill ranged from “extremely well” as the highest score of 5 to “not well” with the lowest score of 1. Five hundred and three female SWAs representing NCAA Division I (294) and Division II (219) member institutions were mailed the AMPS instrument. The survey was completed by 204 SWAs in Division I and 152 SWAs in Division II for an overall response rate was 70.7 percent. Descriptive statistics were employed to summarize the demographics of respondents item and scale responses. A series of one-way analyses of variance designs were used to compare mean response differences using Division status as the independent variable, and scores on leadership importance, management function, management role, and management skill as the dependent variables. A second series of one-way analyses of variance designs were conducted using administrative position title as the independent variable and the aforementioned dependent variables. Tukey b post hoc comparisons were conducted to determine differences in groupings which were significant. The findings indicate significant differences by Division status on leadership importance, management function, management role, and management skill. SWAs in Division I had higher mean group scores in general, than SWAs in Division II on all subscales. SWAs with higher ranking administrative position titles had higher mean group scores on leadership importance, management function, management role, and management skill than SWAs with lower ranking administrative position titles.