Faculty and administrator perceptions of decision making.

This research study was conducted in associate and baccalaureate schools of nursing. This research focused on the extent of faculty participation in decision making; a description and analysis of the characteristics of nurse faculty, nurse administrators, and the organizations of associate and baccalaureate schools of nursing; the interrelationships between opportunities for participation in decision making and the level and type of decision making; the relationships between various personal and situational variables that affect decision making, the relationship between the type of involvement in decision making to the variables of job satisfaction, professional commitment, and job tension; and the relationships among the variables of job satisfaction, professional commitment and job tension. Ninety-three faculty and 10 administrators participated in the research study. Research data were collected by three instruments: the School Information Profile, the Administrative Questionnaire, and the Faculty Questionnaire. The data were subjected to frequency distribution statistics, the RELIABILITY program of SPSS, Pearson correlation coefficients, Canonical correlations, and Multiple Regression analysis. The primary study results were: Faculty reported that their participation in decision making is primarily in the area of making recommendations, not final determinations. Faculty stated that decision making is usually a group process. Administrator perceptions were that faculty possess more decision-making power than faculty believed. Faculty reaffirmed that job satisfaction and professional commitment are positively correlated, and that job tension was found to be negatively correlated to job satisfaction and professional commitment.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)