Principals’ Perceptions of Their Approaches to Organizational Leadership: Revisiting Bolman and Deal

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to report on a study which examined perceptions of a stratified random sample of California school administrators with regard to their use of behavior strategies. The examination utilizes a four-approach framework developed by Bolman and Deal (1984), and nine specific managerial functions to extract a total of 36 possible sets of behavior strategies. Of all the nine functions the administrators perceived the human resource approach as most extensively used and the political approach as least extensive. Some individual functions showed rankings which were different from the overall approach ranking. The paper provides interpretations for the findings including comparisons to findings of other related studies. Implications for research and practice are derived at the end of the paper.