Date of Award
8-1980
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Educational Leadership
First Advisor
Dr. James A. Davenport
Second Advisor
Dr. Gene Booker
Third Advisor
Dr. Kenneth Simon
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine various management problems that may exist in the administrative setting when the group being managed has as much or more education and/or experience than the manager. Specifically, the nature of medical training and education in medical schools was proposed to affect the groups of medical doctors, both salaried by the corporation and volunteers, in the managerial setting when the manager was required to operate the educational facility as a business in the profit-making sense as opposed to the hospital setting where the doctors may be less concerned about cost factors. The congruence of beliefs behind the concept of the relationship between culture and role model was also suggested to influence the administrative relationship.
The selection of Southwestern Michigan Area Health Education Center (SMAHEC) was twofold. First, SMAHEC exemplified a corporation jointly operated by hospitals and medical schools for the purpose of providing education for medical students and post-education for medical doctors. Second, SMAHEC is internally structured to present a hierarchy which includes a Board of Directors, Corporate Medical Director, staff of volunteer medical doctors, staff of salaried medical doctors, and technical/clerical personnel.
The potential disparity between the managing Director, the salaried doctors, the volunteer doctors, and the technical/clerical staff was measured by two instruments. The Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) was used to examine the leader behavior preferred by the various populations outlined above to determine agreement, if any, on the type of management behavior structurally desired. The Leadership Opinion Questionnaire (LOQ) was used to measure the consideration and structure of the various populations.
The findings of this study indicated that there were no significant differences between the populations and no pattern of types of doctors among the salaried or volunteer medical doctors either exclusively or collectively. The situational favorableness was also summarized in the study. It was determined that a change in leaders would not necessarily benefit the corporation. The employees of the corporation, however, would prefer the director to use more behavior indicative of consideration than presently used.
Future studies were encouraged to use new instrumentation developed solely for the purpose of detecting management problems of the particular corporation/population under investigation.
Access Setting
Dissertation-Open Access
Recommended Citation
House, Kathy Anne Hulst, "An Examination of Potential Problems that May Be Encountered in the Administration of an Educational Corporation in the Management of Medical Doctors" (1980). Dissertations. 2636.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/2636