Machiavellianism among college and university library directors

This research investigated the Machiavellian orientation of randomly selected college and university library directors in the United States. Machiavellianism was measured by responses to the Mach V scale (Christie & Geis, 1970).;One hundred library directors were drawn from each of four national sampling frames: Category I (doctoral) institutions and Category IIB (baccalaureate) institutions (according to Academe (March-April 1993)); law schools (according to The Official Guide to U.S. Law Schools, 1993-94); and medical schools (according to Medical School Admission Requirements, 1994-95). An overall usable response rate of 62% was achieved.;Four hypotheses were evaluated. Hypothesis I predicted law school library directors would score higher on the Mach V scale than Category I institution library directors. No significant difference in Mach scores emerged between the two groups. Hypothesis II anticipated law school library directors would score higher on the Mach V scale than medical school library directors. No significant difference in Mach scores appeared between the two groups.;Hypothesis III expected law school library directors would score higher on the Mach V scale than Category IIB institution library directors. No significant difference in Mach scores arose between the two groups. Hypothesis IV speculated that Category I institution library directors would score higher on the Mach V scale than Category IIB institution library directors. No significant difference in Mach scores occurred between the two groups. Results indicated that the library directors sampled were fairly homogeneous in Machiavellian orientation.;Four research questions examined Machiavellianism, library type and various demographic variables, such as age, gender, and education. All of the analyses yielded nonsignificant results with the exception of a significant main effect found for gender. In this research female library directors, across the four library types, consistently scored significantly higher in Machiavellianism than male library directors.