Leadership styles of selected academic library department heads as perceived by self and subordinates

This study investigated whether there was a difference in the leadership style exhibited by the department heads of selected liberal arts college libraries when dealing with various subordinate groups according to their self-perceptions and the perceptions of their subordinate groups.;The libraries in this study were from institutions classified as private liberal arts colleges I, with participants from public service departments and technical service departments. The proportion of participating libraries (n = 55) to total population (n = 137) was 40.15%.;The leadership style was ascertained by calculating the mean score on the Ohio State University Leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire Form XII. The data from the demographic survey and the questionnaire were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences PC+. Analysis was performed by use of the two-tailed t-test and the chi-square statistics with a level of significance less than.05 being considered significant.;The conclusions from the study are: (1) On the variable Initiation of Structure, there seems to be a difference in the technical service department heads' perceptions and the perceptions of the department's professional staff members. (2) On the variable Consideration, there seems to be differences in the department heads' perceptions and the perceptions of both the nonprofessional and nondepartment head staff members. (3) On the variable Consideration, there seems to be a significant relationship between the perceptions of: (a) nondepartment head participants when the department head is female and (b) all participants when the department has held the current position for six to ten years. (4) On the variable Status, there seems to be a significant relationship between the perceptions of professional and nonprofessional staff members when assessing their respective department head. (5) On the variable Initiation of Structure, there seems to be a significant relationship between the perceptions of participants when the department head: (a) was male, (b) was female, (c) was between twenty-one to thirty-five years of age, (d) had no professionals, and (e) had from one to two professionals reporting to the department head.