Toward a grounded theory of participative leadership: perspectives of community college presidents

Abstract

According to the recent literature on the American comprehensive community college, the institution is currently encountering a vast array of complex issues that call for insightful, informed and visionary presidential leadership. The factors underpinning the current environment bring to the forefront serious concerns regarding the future of the community college, and increased emphasis is being placed on strengthening the internal environment of the institution. This study responds to the renewed interest in the importance of strong presidential leadership in creating effective, credible mechanisms for broad participation in campus decision making. This grounded theory study addressed the issue of how community college presidents foster active, broad-based participation in campus decision-making processes. This study was based on in-depth interviews with seven community college presidents who were selected on the basis of their work in implementing participative governance within their respective institutions. The research process followed accepted practices within the field of grounded theory including theoretical sampling, coding and analysis. The findings of this study were presented according to the emergence of four axial categories, and a core category was identified and described. In general, the findings indicate that participative leadership is a highly interactive, dynamic, developmental process for building environments for broad participation. The core category, Visioning Participative Environments, reveals the centrality of the visioning process throughout each sequence of the participative leadership process. This study responded to the need for research that illustrates the richness, complexity and multi-dimensional nature of participative leadership as it unfolds within the community college environment. A conceptual model of participative leadership is presented which is based on theoretical cornerstones. The cornerstones include envisioning the participative organization, participative passages, the web of participation and re-visioning the participative organization. This model embodies key leadership practices that flow from the cornerstones. Thus, this study heeded the call for building theory on the topic of participative leadership as experienced by community college presidents. The results are intended for practitioners and researchers.