Abstract:
Leadership is the process of providing a direction, and influencing individual or groups to
achieve set goals of the group , and it is a key ingredient for an organization to achieve its
set goals. A leader is a person who has power to influence individuals or group of people
towards the achievement of these set goals. The main objective of this study was to
establish the influence of leadership style on academic stuff retention in some private
universities in Ashanti region of Ghana. The study also sought to ascertain the kind of
leadership styles practice of managers of these institutions, and also sought to make
recommendations in the areas of leadership practice for the improvement of academic staff
retention. Descriptive survey was employed for this study. A convenience sampling
method was used since every academic staff constitute part of the population of the study.
A total of 77 respondents participated in the study. The study was quantitative and
therefore relied on self-administered questionnaires to obtain data from the respondents.
The data was analyzed using inferential statistical tool. The major findings of the study
indicated that, leadership styles had no influence on academic staff retention in these
universities, the study also revealed that, authoritative leadership style was the dominant
practice, though democratic leadership style was most preferred. The study further showed
that improvement in working conditions, remunerations, effective participative decision
making and work relationship are imperative for academic staff retention. Finally, the
study recommended the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, in addition to
multiple variables for future studies.
Description:
A Dissertation in the Department of Educational Leadership, Faculty of Education
and Communication Sciences submitted to the School of Graduate Studies, Akenten
Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development, in
partial fulfilment of the requirements for award of the Master of Arts (Educational
Leadership) degree