Basic Design and Intent. This study tested Rensis Likert's (1961, 1967) basic assumption that as organizations moved closer to a participatory leader-management style, productivity would increase. The productivity measure selected for this study was student academic achievement as measured by performance on the California Achievement Tests administered to students in grades 2, 3, 4 and 5 during the 1980-1981 school year. / Methodology employed in this descriptive investigation was used to answer two major research questions: (1) Did nine high achieving (Group 1 effective) elementary organizations (schools at least six months ahead of national norms) differ significantly in climate, leadership and intervening variable patterns from those evidenced in nine low achieving (Group 2 less effective) organizations (schools at least six months behind national norms)? (2) Did significant relationships exist between a school's academic performance (reading, language and mathematics subtests) and the school's leader-management style as measured by Likert's Profile of a School instrument (climate, leadership and intervening variable patterns)? / Methodology. Hypothesis 1, which proposed that effective schools would receive statistically higher mean scores on the (POS) variables measured than less effective schools, employed both univariate (student's t-test) and multivariate (Hotellings T('2)) tests of significance. Nineteen null subhypotheses were developed and tested at the .05 level. Hypothesis 2 proposed that student academic achievement would be higher as school organizations moved closer to a participatory leader-management style (System 4). All 18 sample schools were pooled and a partial order Peason Product-Moment correlation analysis was performed. Two confounding variables, percentage of minority enrollment and percentage of students eating lunch at free or reduced rates, were held constant. A series of 12 null sub-hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance. / Conclusions. Hypothesis 1: High achieving and low achieving schools selected for participation in this study did not differ significantly on any of the 19 organizational variables measured by the (POS). Hypothesis 2: Seven of 12 null sub-hypotheses accompanying hypothesis 2 were rejected. Sixty-eight per cent of 172 possible correlations were significant at the .05 level. The findings tended to support Likert's basic contention regarding the association of higher productivity with participatory leader-management systems. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-09, Section: A, page: 3820. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74603 |
| Contributors | CLARK, JOHN RICHARD., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 156 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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