Date of Award

4-1984

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Dr. Richard E. Munsterman

Second Advisor

Dr. Uldis Smidchens

Third Advisor

Dr. John Copps

Abstract

Golden first investigated labor peace to determine if the causes of labor peace could be identified. It was his premise that organizations should work toward peace to allow the organizational goals to be accomplished more efficiently. Given Golden's premise, this study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between the quality of labor peace in school districts and the external factors of community involvement, declining enrollment, tax support and assessed evaluation. These factors were selected as they are the external factors most influential on the operation of a school district. A total of 22 districts in Southwestern Lower Michigan, 16 identified as having labor peace and 6 as having no labor peace, were used as the sample. These districts were identified as belonging to one of the labor peace categories by using Engle's (1981) method of identifying districts into these categories. A questionnaire on community involvement was created by utilizing a content validity process to determine which items were appropriate for the questionnaire. The items selected by this process were used on the final community involvement questionnaire. Data were then collected on this topic by having the superintendent, board president, and association president of each district complete a questionnaire. Bulletins 1012 and 1014, issued by the State Department of Education, were used to collect data on enrollment trends, tax support, and assessed evaluation in each district. A one-way ANOVA was used to analyze the data collected on each district. The results of the data analysis provided no evidence that a relationship existed between the quality of labor peace and the factors of community involvement, tax support, and assessed evaluation in the direction predicted in the hypotheses. Declining enrollment was found to be related with the quality of labor peace in a school district. Districts identified as belonging to the no labor peace category had a larger average decline in enrollment than did the labor peace districts.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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