Higher education system governance: an exploratory study of presidential decision making in the kentucky community and technical college system

Summary

The number of higher education systems across the United States has increased over the last several decades. Their emergence can be attributed to legislative authorization, which highlights the influential relationship between system governance and state economic, political, and social needs. Though system governance is influenced by state needs, the organizational structure of higher education systems presents challenges for how decisions are made and who is involved in the decision making process (McGuinness, 2013). This study explored presidential decision making in KCTCS by examining the location of decision making and how decision making is shared between the KCTCS president and college presidents for academic,

administrative, and personnel decision areas. With this purpose, the study will extend knowledge about decision making and presidential leadership in community college systems, and further contribute to the development of literature in the area of community college systems.
The following chapter presents literature on higher education governance and the theoretical propositions informing the findings of the study. Additionally, the chapter highlights relevant literature on the evolution of higher education systems that includes a classification of state boards for higher education and their relationship with postsecondary institutions, a review of characteristics of community college systems, and a discussion of decision making within community college systems. Because this study explores presidential decision making, additional literature is presented in the chapter that extends the conversation around the community college presidency and leadership in higher education systems.
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE
The literature review presents theories related to the governance of higher education institutions as well as decision making in higher education systems. The review begins with an examination of organizational and leadership theory informing the findings of the study. Then, a review of higher education systems contextualized in national and state governance provides a foundation for examining KCTCS. Following the review of higher education systems is an analysis of empirical research on decision making and presidential leadership in community college systems that altogether frames this study.
As suggested by Joyner (2013), the researcher began by reviewing literature reviews and meta-analyses to guide the identification of a research problem within governance and decision making in higher education systems. Also, name searches returned resources for scholars identified as experts or primary contributors to the field of research on governance and higher education systems. Moreover, research on the evolution of higher education systems was gathered to help situate governance and decision making within systems. Collecting this research involved searching databases for articles using a variety of key word combinations, such as governance and higher education, governance models and academic institutions, governance and decision making, presidents and decision making, higher education systems, and multi-campus institutions, among other key words and combinations. The multitude of returned results led to a separation of searches, such that independent searches were conducted for governance, presidency, and decision making. Separating the searches provided more
depth for gathering and reviewing relevant literature. The search was conducted until saturation was met and the search was exhausted.
To categorize relevant research as either primary or secondary sources, the researcher began by reading abstracts. For primary, critical sources, the researcher read and outlined conceptual research and further read, outlined, and critiqued empirical research. While reading and outlining, the researcher began to synthesize conceptual and empirical research to find common threads and gaps in the literature. These gaps informed the direction of the study. In addition, the researcher used footnote chasing to identify additional useful research based on cited references in articles (Krathwohl & Smith, 2005). This process led to additional searches and a cyclical process of footnoting and searching until saturation was met. For areas where critical information was needed and footnoting and searches returned no useable results, the researcher focused on published dissertations and practitioner-based research and reports.