In the corporate world, leaders typically plan for succession, carefully grooming their heir apparent. In academia, however, it is rare for such planning to occur at the institutional level, much less the departmental level. This multiple case study explores how twelve department chairs in one public research university think about leadership development for their departments. While succession planning - as defined in traditional management literature - does not occur in academic departments, current chairs are active in promoting leadership continuity - purposefully preparing and cultivating potential leaders who have the skills and knowledge to most readily step in as chair so that departments can maintain momentum even during times of leadership transition. There are three dimensions that have been derived from the analysis: context, process, and person. This study describes how these three dimensions influence the ways in which chairs seek to enhance leadership capacity in their departments, provides policy and practice recommendations for institutions and departments to support these activities, and offers suggestions for future research in this critical area of academic leadership.

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Until this dissertation, no research had investigated the use by community college development officers of specific skills that have been identified in the literature as significant in the successful implementation of planned change. Yet, community college development officers write proposals and case statements that secure tangible resources to support initiatives which may alter or significantly change practices of selective programs or campus systems. Maximization of grant resources allocated to improve community college practices might be achieved more readily if the writers of grant proposals use proven techniques for diffusing the innovations they propose into community colleges. A job analysis survey was conducted to capture information from 300 randomly-selected community college development officers as to their relative use of specific skills that have been identified within the literature review as skills used by successful implementers of planned change. Analysis of the findings was conducted in relation to selected demographic subfields of the responders to determine whether gender, specific professional experiences, professional training, campus size or location, or years of professional experience in community college development statistically correlate to the use of the skills that are examined in the study. The research supports the hypothesis that development officers who raise funds through grant writing engage more frequently in change facilitation activities than those who develop resources through solicitation of the private sector. The research also provides evidence that there are differences between the change facilitation activities performed by development officers practicing at early stages within their careers and those with more than ten years of experience.

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