Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

King, Stephanie B.

Committee Member

Coats, Linda T.

Committee Member

Fincher, Mark Edward

Committee Member

Johnson, Susan M.

Date of Degree

12-8-2017

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Community College Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

College

College of Education

Department

Department of Educational Leadership

Abstract

Market-responsive college leaders are challenged to navigate external relationships with business and industry, government officials, and community leaders, as well as the resulting pressures of multiple missions of the comprehensive community college. The leaders are faced with three predominant issues involving the market-responsive college and its relationship to the overall comprehensive college. These issues include: (a) its relationship to the transfer role, (b) difficulty of defining and measuring its success, and (c) its placement within the organization. Bolman and Deal’s (2013) leadership frames provide a model to understand how framing by market-responsive college leaders influences their organizations. A qualitative case study research method was used to explore how organizational frames used by market-responsive college leaders affect the market-responsive organization. The participants were five market-responsive college leaders from comprehensive community colleges in Mississippi. The findings suggest that market-responsive leaders, guided by their framework, affected their market-responsive college through reorganization, setting the tone of the relationship with academic transfer division, and establishing division priorities through the selection and recognition of measures for success. They used the structural frame to change the college structure to fit the task and environment, the political frame to set the agenda and create a power base, and the symbolic frame to create faith in the market-responsive college. This study provides aspiring and existing leaders of market-responsive colleges with possible lenses to view commonly experienced issues and to gain insight into the benefits of reframing and multiraming.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/18552

Comments

career||workforce||technical||vice president

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