The impact of bargaining unit placement on the role perceptions of departmental chairmen in four-year schools of allied health professions

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if bargaining unit placement of chairmen in selected departments or programs of allied health professionals influenced their perceptions of the duties, goals and satisfaction associated with their administrative, academic and leadership roles. More specifically, this study compared and analyzed the role perceptions of department chairmen who were placed in faculty bargaining units with the role perceptions of those who were excluded from faculty bargaining units in four-year schools of allied health professions. Procedure: An instrument which elicited chairmen's perceptions of the duties, goals and satisfactions associated with their academic, administrative and leadership functions was administered to selected department chairmen. Subsequently, comparisons were made between included and excluded chairmen groups on: 1) perceptions of their satisfaction as department chairmen with 16 academic, administrative or leadership-related job opportunities and 4 derived satisfaction factors; 2) perceptions of the amount of goal emphasis currently associated with 11 academic, administrative or leadership goals and 4 derived goal factors; and 3) perceptions of the amount of time spent on 27 academic, administrative or leadership duties and 7 derived duty factors. Three sets of items, 16 job opportunity items, 11 goal items and 27 duty items, were factor analyzed and the 3 sets of resultant factors were utilized as predictor variables in 3 discriminant function analyses. Multivariate F-ratios for group differences relative to each of three sets of factors (duties, goals and satisfaction) and univariate F-ratios for differences with regard to each individual factor were calculated..