Unionization's Impact on Department Chair Perceptions of Institutional Culture: A Comparative Study

• In Event: Workplace Learning in Educational Spaces

Abstract

The purpose of this examination was to answer if faculty unionization has an impact on department chairs’ perception of institutional culture. Part of a national, comparative study, Bergquist and Pawlak’s Academic Cultures Inventory (2008) was adapted to capture viewpoints of unionized and nonunionized chairs. There were three main findings: 1) The chair groups both had the largest amount of responses declared as undetermined because there was not a majority of answers that related to a culture type; 2) Unionized chairs were more likely to identify belonging to a managerial culture; and 3) Non-unionized chairs were more likely to identify belonging to the virtual culture. Implications of chairs’ cultural understandings of their institutions is discussed in the context of their leadership.

Author

• Leigh Settlemoir Dzwik, Oakland University