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JOCM
32,1 Higher education under fire:
implementing and assessing a
culture change for sustainment
164 Paul Barrett, John Gaskins and James Haug
College of Business and Economics,
Received 19 April 2018
Revised 7 September 2018 Longwood University, Farmville, Virginia, USA
Accepted 13 November 2018

Abstract
Purpose – Leadership development is a significant organizational investment and is considered
a foundation for a culture change process. In a highly disruptive environment, higher education
administrators are investigating the potential benefits of this investment. Specifically, while the great
recession was underway in 2010, and with a backdrop of continuous enrollment decline, a business school
in a public university in the USA utilized an experimental design to test a globally recognized business
model for leadership development and its impacts on leadership effectiveness. The paper aims to discuss
these issues.
Design/methodology/approach – The intervention included a two-day training session followed by a
year-long process for cementing in learning, while examining ensuing leadership effectiveness. Potential
control variables in the model included measures of four dimensions of leadership fitness which were defined
as the physical, socio-emotional, spiritual and mental dimensions. When the leadership development
intervention showed promising results the business school forged ahead to implement a culture change
process based on the leadership development intervention to foster teamwork and innovation.
Findings – As a longitudinal implementation and assessment process, subsequent results of the culture
change process spurred year over year increases in enrollments, student retention, student placement, along
with consistently escalating faculty research and academic program rankings. The culture change
process spread organically from the business school throughout the university as a whole with similar
positive impacts.
Research limitations/implications – Implications, including an assertion that leadership development is
a viable tool for higher education’s organizational sustainment are discussed.
Originality/value – Future research opportunities of institutional outcomes in higher education due to a
systemic investment in annual culture enhancement are also discussed.
Keywords Leadership development, Leadership effectiveness, Organizational culture change,
Higher education sustainment
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
In this light speed technology age, global organizational strategy moves at a pace often
greater than organizations can develop leaders. This gap indicates a need to align leadership
development with the organization’s mission and strategy (Canals, 2014). Higher education
is itself more global today than ever, accepting and retaining international students for both
diversity and sustained or increased enrollment factors. In addition, universities often
provide international study-abroad experiences as part of their mission to offer learning
opportunities related to global citizenship for their domestic students. Financially,
government sponsored universities see their public revenue dropping each year, and all
colleges and universities are experiencing facility and other operating costs escalating each
year. These financial challenges are viewed as critical concerns by college presidents related
to institutional sustainment (Price et al., 2016). Students and their families have been
Journal of Organizational Change
Management consistently asking about the value proposition of a college education. Will graduates ever
Vol. 32 No. 1, 2019
pp. 164-180
be able to pay off their student debt, and is their investment in a college degree going to
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0953-4814
provide a financial and personal return on investment […] ever? These issues make it
DOI 10.1108/JOCM-04-2018-0098 difficult to compete in higher education, and ever more relevant to establish and maintain
what Pounder (2001) referred to as new leadership. This sense of leadership as new indicates Higher
that organizational effectiveness, particularly in higher education, is directly linked to the education
ever evolving leaders in the organization. Leadership evolution flourishes within an under fire
organization that is a vibrant platform for leadership development (Brown, 1992).
The business world has been investing in leadership development with exuberance for
decades. Related to the business world Fulmer and Goldsmith (2001) suggested that the
largest and most profitable corporations had grown to view leadership development as a 165
competitive advantage. But as technology constitutes rapid continuous disruption, the bar
for attaining competitive advantage may have changed. Leadership development, as
Johnson et al. (2012) advocated, needs to focus on goal setting and transfer of training. With
this focus in mind, this study opted to test a globally recognized business model for
leadership development in a setting for educators who are actively leading in a four year
educational institution. Will the potent impacts of a decades-old, widely used business
model for leadership development translate to similar positive outcomes in higher
education? That was the question the initial phase of this research project attempted to
answer. Moreover, the intervention in this study was intended to develop leadership skills of
the educator leader/participants with the hope that a culture change process could be
identified and implemented to foster teamwork and innovation to rise to the challenges in
higher education. That hope materialized with a multi-year culture change process that
ignited beneficial results that exceeded expectations.

Literature review
Leadership development, as Day (2001) pointed out, seems to have reached a real zenith
where organizational resources are routinely furnished and the practice is viewed as a
necessary path to competitive prowess. Leadership development can be characterized as an
investment that bolsters the capability and resourcefulness of organizational leaders. It is
part of an organization’s human resources strategy to attract, strengthen and protect its
human capital (Lepak and Snell, 1999), while also expanding high performance teamwork,
or what Brass and Krackhardt (1999) called social capital. What is a striking matter of
contention between the business world and the higher education world is that while
competencies for effective leadership are virtually the same, many universities have not
established systems for leadership development for their faculty and administrative staff
(Spendlove, 2007). This defies logic, in so far as universities began to teach sustainment
theory and practice regularly over the last decade, and have indicated in surveys that they
value becoming a sustainable university (Wright and Horst, 2013). However, they often
leave out leadership development processes that are vital to remaining competitive and
ensuring institutional survival.
Common leadership development practices include a number of options such as
training, mentoring, coaching, job roles and assignments, project-based learning, and
cross-function networking. This study incorporated leadership development in the
training modality, utilizing a training program that has been implemented in
organizations of all types around the world. The training in the study was based on the
book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (2004). This 7 Habits
technology has been associated with positive organizational behavior (Luthans, 2002),
particularly for the emergence of employee engagement (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008).
Further, as Korac-Kakabadse et al. (2002) noted, the 7 Habits is especially useful in
addressing the spiritual dimension of leadership praxis, and when practiced widely
throughout an organization, it could be a factor in an organizational environment that
fosters any single stakeholder’s spiritual development. Moreover, while a huge number of
studies indicate the 7 Habits technology has had a positive impact on leadership
development and leadership effectiveness in business, the literature does not reveal any
JOCM empirical studies reporting these types of results in higher education. The initial
32,1 experimental field study in this research project attempted to address this important
information gap and inform the field accordingly.

Leadership effectiveness
Fiedler and Chemers (1967) first discussed the theory of leadership effectiveness and later
166 provided important details of the construct (Fiedler et al., 1976). In the decades since their
seminal work, a fuller understanding of leadership effectiveness has emerged. A variety of
frameworks prevail that explain leadership effectiveness, and these schemas can be
classified into one of three conventions: trait, behavioral or situational theories (House and
Podsakoff, 1994). For this study, leadership effectiveness was considered a function of the
leader’s ability to exhibit a variety of behaviors positively influencing their immediate
stakeholders in a culture change process to achieve organizational goals.
To understand the effectiveness of leadership as an “ensuing” factor in the model tested
in this research, both quantitative and qualitative dimensions were activated and served as
measures representing actual data collected in an empirical fashion. In this study, the
measure implemented for leadership effectiveness was the Franklin Covey (FC) Benchmark
360 process. In essence, the Benchmark 360 provided information highlighting factors of
leadership effectiveness that can be aggregated into three main categories: self-
management, work management and health management.
The Benchmark 360 is one of several leading multi-factor assessment tools available and
used in organizations world-wide for understanding leadership effectiveness (Thach, 2002).
As Church and Rotolo (2013) pointed out, the use of such benchmark instruments is often
considered to be a recent innovation over the last decade or so. However, the researchers
note that the core theory and processes involved in benchmark assessments were employed
decades ago by industrial-organizational psychologists. What is perhaps noteworthy in the
last decade is the thinking that the role of a leader in the digital, global economy is more
complex than ever. Subsequently, multi-source ratings from various constituencies in a 360-
degree process are now considered essential to understand a leader’s competencies (Brutus
et al., 1998). However, as Hoption (2016) advised, ratings tools like 360-degree instruments
yield more relevant data when they are administered to reflect the cumulative experience
followers have with a leader, rather than only key instances of leadership. In this study, the
timeline for administering the Benchmark 360 was over one full year, collecting data relative
to the overall experience with leaders.
In this study, the three main assessment categories are used as an aggregate index to
measure changes in leadership effectiveness over time, and specifically to measure
effectiveness differences between two test groups. In addition, the study adhered to the
Penny (2003) assertion that the 360-degree assessment should provide an equivalent
measure between different types of raters, and an equivalent method of delivery. To achieve
this consistency of measure and delivery, all study participants provided the FC Benchmark
360 data electronically immediately before the leadership development intervention, and one
year post intervention. Additionally, it should be noted that the FC Benchmark 360, used by
many practitioners, takes into consideration some of the constructs presented in Figure 1.
For example, the data collected with the Benchmark 360 helped to determine if and how
principles of leadership fitness, as control variables, ultimately might have had any effect on
the impact of the leadership development intervention on leadership effectiveness.

Leadership and culture change process

As Barratt-Pugh et al. (2013) pointed out, leaders and managers play an instrumental role in
any organizational culture change process. They are the models of behavior associated with
the desired culture change. Further, as Schein (2010) asserted, leaders embed and transmit
culture to others throughout the organization as facilitators more than supervisors. Kellis Higher
and Ran (2015) supported the Schein concept, indicating that leadership effectiveness in a education
culture change process was predominantly focused on relationship-based distributed under fire
leadership. The administrators in the host university in this study considered distributed
leadership a crucial platform for their culture change process. In fact, distributive leadership
was ingrained in the leadership development intervention in the host school via Habit 6 (of
the 7 Habits) known as “Synergy.” Leaders were trained to believe that a constant flow of 167
ideas from all employees would create the ground floor up buy-in for any actionable idea.
The feedback of faculty and staff that they were feeling valued and part of the process
became its own positive force for the culture change process.
Latta (2015) argued that culture change processes include simultaneous dynamics of
facilitation and resistance. Leaders who recognize that resistance to culture change is part of
a healthy phase of skepticism will be ready and able to manage through to a higher phase of
organizational culture transformation and its associated benefits. In addition, as Latta
indicated, the leaders in the host business school saw the resistance to change, and the
facilitation of change as co-inhabitants in the change process, not opposing forces. This too
was a derivative of the leadership development intervention related to Habit 5 (of the 7
Habits), known as “Seek first to understand, then be understood.” This habit in the
leadership development intervention encouraged faculty and staff to engage in crucial
conversations without pre-judging others opinions or suggestions. It also kindled
alternative options discussions that led to innovations in curriculum and research.

Leadership fitness as a control factor

Leadership fitness was considered a potential control factor in this study. It addresses the
biological and psychological factors that contribute to a leader’s ability to effectively lead an
organization. For example, Rosen (2014) highlighted the physical, emotional and intellectual
components of fitness and discussed a case study at Novartis AG where leadership
development includes various healthy capacity building activities. Pearce (2007) said that
fitness was now part of a road map for twenty-first century leadership development, and the
Lovelace et al. (2007) study on work stress as it relates to fitness, and the Smith’s (2011)
study on resilience and spirituality in policing, support this notion. Our review of the
literature on leadership fitness begins with an examination of the representative research on
the physical dimension, and proceeds to work through the other dimensions.

Physical dimension
McDowell-Larsen et al. (2002) discovered that regular exercise routinely empowers leaders
to manage work-related stress in their daily schedules. Further, exercise enhances one’s self-
image, reduces the likelihood of disease and provides a way to improve effectiveness.
Because enhanced fitness could have a positive relationship to effectiveness, organizations

Leadership
Figure 1.
Fitness
The effects of
leadership
Mental Physical Socio-Emotional Spiritual development on
Dimension Dimension Dimension Dimension
leadership
effectiveness while
understanding the
Leadership Leadership four dimensions of
Development Effectiveness leadership fitness as a
set of control
variables
JOCM devote time, energy and funds in promoting wellness among employees. With the
32,1 globalization of the economy and rising complexity of international leadership, a greater
number of interruptions and higher stress levels invade a leader’s daily life and fitness. As
Martin (2007) proposed, the angst built into modern leadership encourages leaders to
engage in every available option to sustain a platform of physical health. In other words,
challenging times require higher, sustained energy levels.
168 Kur and Bunning (2002) propose that today’s leaders attempt to maintain a work/life
balance, identifying weak spots, ready to identify any obstacles to fitness that can be
removed. Exercise physiology studies corroborate this notion showing that when
leaders integrate exercise into their lives in some manner, there is a positive impact
on leadership performance (Goldsby and Neck, 2001; McDowell-Larsen, 2003).
As Goldsby and Neck contend, the preferred approach for achieving wellness via
physical exercise is through a mental framework that embodies the benefits of challenging
work. When leaders embrace their physical health as much as they do their financial and
career health, most of them achieve conditions leading to exceptional physical fitness.
This implies that as people pursue the physical benefits of fitness, they are likely to
incorporate the skills of effective leadership, such as goal achievement, follow-through
and accountability.

Socio-emotional dimension
Researchers have regarded emotions and emotional control as related to leadership
effectiveness since Eichler (1934) reported a correlation between leadership and emotional
self-control, followed by Drake (1944) who discovered a significant correlation between
leadership and emotional constancy.
The study of the socio-emotional dimension, including emotional intelligence (EI), and
how it relates to the overall effectiveness of a leader has become a captivating topic in the
broader field of management (Rosete and Ciarrochi, 2005). In a study by Mavroveli et al.
(2009), the researchers came to the conclusion that the construct of trait EI is largely
independent of cognitive ability, but strongly predictive of emotional and social criteria.
According to Petrides (2011), trait EI theory maintains that certain emotion profiles will be
advantageous in some contexts, but not in others. More recently, research into the link
between EI and leadership effectiveness has become narrower in focus with researchers
starting to examine the different EI dimensions for leadership criteria. Walter et al. (2011)
provided a review of empirical studies and framed the differing views about the relevance of
EI. They concluded that even though the scholarly literature does not support hyperbolic
claims regarding EI’s relevance for leadership processes, evidence does suggest that EI has
potential to help scholars better understand leadership emergence, specific leadership
behaviors and leader effectiveness.

Spiritual dimension
There is a flourishing interest in spirituality in the leadership and organizational literature,
but as Markow and Klenke (2005) point out, there is no widely accepted definition of the
term. In a review of 140 articles on workplace spirituality and how spirituality supports
organizational performance, Karakas (2010) found more than 70 definitions of spirituality at
work. For example, spirituality has been defined by Mitroff and Denton (1999) as the basic
feeling of being connected with one’s complete self, while Guillory (2000) asserted that
spirituality is simply our inner consciousness. In his meta-analysis review, Karakas
synthesized the literature and discussed how it offered three different perspectives on how
spirituality benefits employees: spirituality enhances employees’ overall well-being and
quality of life; spirituality provides employees a sense of meaning and purpose at work; and
spirituality provides employees a sense of interconnectedness and community. He proposes
that the interchange between these three perspectives can provide a more inclusive Higher
understanding of how spirituality leads to effectiveness and better performance in education
organizations. Moreover, spirituality in this study followed this Karakas perspective, under fire
particularly as it aligned with the assertion that spirituality is feeling coherently united with
one’s whole self.

Mental dimension 169

For some time researchers have been investigating the effects of long-term cognitive
stimulation in maintaining the mental prowess in adults of all ages (Masunaga and Horn,
2001; Meinz, 2000; Meinz and Salthouse, 1998). This type of research highlights the
importance of the mental dimension in leadership fitness. Further, it exemplifies the
justification to examine comparisons amongst highly experienced or expert individuals (i.e.
leaders) related to the effects of a lifetime spent in committed quest of cognitive stimulation.
Sadly, the study of the effects of cognitive stimulation provides little evidence of the impact
on total mental skills, referred to as the transfer of cognitive functioning. Leadership
research, therefore, has so far provided little basis for concluding that general cognitive
stimulation will have broad effects across many different types of cognitive traits. This
study sought to address this deficit by examining cognitive performance as part of the
mental dimension in leadership fitness with a leadership development intervention designed
specifically to encourage participants to enhance overall cognitive stimulation. The
intervention advocates cognitive stimulation in a manner occurring over a much longer
period of time, sustained for continuous maintenance and improvement in cognitive skills
with potential effects generalizing out to overall leadership fitness.

Research model and hypotheses

Based on the literature, this study undertook the following research questions:
RQ1. In a period of constraints and disruptive changes in the academy, could leadership
development in a higher education institution impact leadership effectiveness?
Further, the study examined if and how enhanced leadership effectiveness could address
and mitigate such constraints and challenges within a culture change process. With this
framework the study postulated the following hypotheses:
H1. The leadership development intervention will have an effect on the dependent
variable of leadership effectiveness.
H2. Enhanced leadership effectiveness will be instrumental in a culture change process
to foster teamwork and innovation for organizational goal achievement.
Figure 1 summarizes the relationship between the independent variable of leadership
development and the dependent variable of leadership effectiveness, with four dimensions
of leadership fitness (physical dimension, socio-emotional dimension, spiritual dimension
and mental dimension) as a set of control variables. Specifically, leadership development
acts as an intervention on leadership effectiveness, and as Canals (2014) pointed out, it can
align a leader’s skills with the organization’s goals and plans to reach those goals. The
control factor of leadership fitness in the study was a composition of the four variables of
physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual dimensions of a leader. The study looked at
leadership fitness to understand if and how these characteristics influenced a leader’s
disposition in the leadership development intervention. How the independent variable,
dependent variable and control variables were operationalized are discussed in detail in the
methodology section immediately below.
JOCM Phase 1 Experimental field study – methodology
32,1 Sample
The president, provost and cabinet vice presidents of the higher education institution
sponsoring this research cooperated in the screening and selection of the members of
an initial pool of more than 50 eligible supervisors for participation in the study. The chief
responsibilities of supervisors in the institution include a wide range of academic and
170 administrative duties. To fulfill these areas of responsibility, the supervisors must hire, train
and supervise direct report staff that work both in a large central facility and a geographically
diverse number of remote locations. Participants from this pool were then randomly assigned
to the experimental and control groups. Code numbers were assigned to each participant to
enable tracking of activities and measurements, and to maintain confidentiality.

Measures
All of the variables representing the dependent and control variables were operationalized
utilizing previously validated and reliable measures. The dependent variable of leadership
effectiveness was operationalized by having the Benchmark 360 instrument electronically
completed by employees who report to the participant, are colleagues with the participant
and are the supervisor for the participant. These Benchmark 360 assessments were
completed immediately before the leadership development intervention, and one year after
the leadership development intervention. The control variables were operationalized asking
participants to complete a nursing faculty hands on assessment of physical health, the Trait
Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, the Shipley-2 IQ instrument and the Assessment of
Spirituality and Religious Sentiments (ASPIRES) instrument. These control variables
measures were completed immediately before the leadership development intervention and
one year after the leadership development intervention. The key independent variable in
this study was the leadership development intervention. Each variable is discussed in
greater detail below.

Leadership development intervention

As part of the research process, this study employed an experimental design whereby a
randomly selected group of supervisors was exposed to a leadership development
intervention. A control group of randomly selected supervisors was not exposed to the
intervention. The leadership development intervention ensured that the procedures were
applied consistently and uniformly across participants, and that the intervention facilitators
conformed to the norms and procedures related to the developer’s training program,
consistent with their established professional standards in the industry.
The intervention was comprised of a two-step leadership development engagement, and
was delivered as follows: an initial phase of a two-day face-to-face session with the
experimental group; and a second phase involving follow-up e-mail contacts to experimental
group participants for a voluntary one-hour monthly review sessions during the test period.
The purpose of these follow-up contacts was to review progress and cement in the learned
behavior adopted in the initial face-to-face leadership development two-day session. Data
collection was organized as a pre and post-test mechanism. Moreover, no other type of
leadership development process took place at the university other than the intervention in
the study during the test period for the study.
The actual framework of the intervention was the two-day delivery of the FC 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People Signature program. Only FC certified facilitators and FC
copyrighted 7 Habits materials and technology components were utilized in this effort. The
follow-up monthly review sessions also comprised only of FC certified facilitators and FC
materials. While there are many case studies on the 7 Habits technology and its impact on
divergent organizational types, this research project is likely the first empirical experimental Higher
design to study the effects of the 7 Habits program. An agreement with the manufacturer education
was executed prior to the study launch, and neither the institution sponsoring the study, nor under fire
the researchers, received any monetary benefit as a result of the research.

Control variables
Related to the physical dimension of leadership fitness, nursing faculty members at the host 171
institution were consulted for measures that were based on best practices, and which could
be collected from experimental study participants. The following four data points were
used: blood pressure; pulse; pulse oxygen saturation; and body mass index (BMI). The pulse
oxygen saturation measures the amount of oxygen that is bound to hemoglobin molecules,
and the BMI is based on a website calculator provided by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention in Atlanta, GA.
The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue) was chosen to operationalize the
Trait EI construct related to the socio-emotional dimension in leadership fitness. Petrides
(2011) suggests that the TEIQue is preferred over other EI questionnaires for three reasons:
first, it offers a direct route to the underlying theory of trait EI; second, it provides
comprehensive coverage of the trait EI sampling domain; and third, it has greater predictive
validity. The TEIQue short form was used in the present study, and is based on the full form.
The 30-item questionnaire includes two items from each of the 15 facets of the TEIQue.
In the study, the ASPIRES was adopted and administered to participants to examine the
spiritual dimension of leadership fitness and its relationship as a control variable to
leadership effectiveness. The ASPIRES was developed by Ralph Piedmont as a
nondenominational measure that is relevant for working with individuals across a wide
range of faith traditions, as well as appropriate for use with non-religious or agnostic
persons (Piedmont, 2012). The ASPIRES measures two different aspects of spirituality,
religious sentiments and spiritual transcendence (ST). Bartlett et al. (2003) employed the ST
scales with chronic arthritis sufferers. They found that the total ST score was a significant
predictor of positive affect and general health (as measured by the SF-36), even after
controlling for age, disease activity, physical function, and depressive symptoms. Overall,
the developing literature on the ASPIRES scales shows them to be useful predictive
constructs across diverse populations, and as a robust predictor of psychosocial outcomes
related to psychological growth, well-being, and coping ability.
The Shipley-2 (Shipley et al., 2009) was the instrument of choice for the study and is a
brief, group-administered measure of cognitive functioning. The test has been standardized
for use with individuals ranging from 7 to 89 years of age. The Shipley-2 provides a measure
of crystallized cognitive ability gained through formal education and life experience, as well
as a measure of fluid cognitive ability, or the capacity to apply logic and solve problems and
learn. Scores from these two subtests are combined to create a composite intelligence score.
Further, Shipley et al. (2009) assessed the reliability and validity of the Shipley-2 by
examining a normative sample comprised of 2,826 subjects. The test demonstrated good to
excellent internal consistency reliability and related to evidence of its validity, the Shipley-2
has been found to discriminate between individuals with and without cognitive deficiencies.

Procedure
Participants in the initial experiment to test a leadership development intervention on
leadership effectiveness were public university supervisors who agreed to voluntarily
participate in the research. The purpose of the research was explained in writing to the
participants as part of an e-mail to all prospective participants, who were free to withdraw at
any time without penalty. A listing of 52 supervisors as potential candidates for the
study was provided by the university’s human resources department to the research team.
JOCM Four candidates dropped from the list due to various work or personal conflicts, bringing
32,1 the total to 48. Participants were randomly assigned to the control group or the experimental
group. Members of the experimental group participated in the full two day face-to-face
group coaching session, as well as the follow-up e-mail and face-to-face review contacts.
Control group participants were not exposed to the intervention or follow up contacts until
after the study was completed. Both the experimental group (n ¼ 21) and control group
172 (n ¼ 27) of supervisors were measured on all of the variables immediately prior to the
leadership development intervention, and again approximately eight months later to
determine any pre-test/post-test differences. Demographic information was also collected
from each participant, and confidentiality was maintained throughout the data collection
through the use of a coding system. Completion of the test data collection took the
participants approximately 30 min in both the pre and post-test sessions. Once all data were
received, analyses were conducted.

Phase 1 Experimental field study – results

Unfortunately, records for 13 (62 percent) of the 21 participants in the training intervention
treatment group were incomplete, primarily due to departure from the University, or failure
to complete the 360 Degree Assessment after the intervention. Records for 16 (59 percent) of
the 27 participants in the control group were also incomplete. Dropping the participants
with incomplete records resulted in a final sample size of eight for the treatment group and
11 for the control group. Despite the small sample sizes, the results strongly supported the
H1 proposition that leadership effectiveness was significantly improved through the 7
Habits leadership development training intervention.

Between groups t-test results

Because of the culminating small sample set, independent-samples t-tests (equal variance
not assumed) were conducted to evaluate the hypotheses that the control group and the
treatment group mean scores on the scales used to evaluate physical health, EI, spirituality,
intelligence and leadership effectiveness (Covey 360) could have been different before the
training. Differences between groups before the training were all non-significant at both the
95 and 90 percent confidence levels in all cases (Table I), indicating that the treatment and
control groups were equivalent to each other in regards to all measured traits prior to the
treatment group receiving the training.
Independent-samples t-test (equal variance not assumed) of posttest scores for leadership
effectiveness (Covey 360) was significant, t (15) ¼ 2.25, p ¼ 0.04, which was consistent with
the research H1 hypothesis (Table II). The treatment group (M ¼ 91.5, SD ¼ 3.34) scored
higher on average than did the control group (M ¼ 86.0, SD ¼ 7.09). The 95% confidence
interval for the difference in means was 0.30 to 10.70. The standardized effect size index
d was 1.02, and the η2 index (η2) indicated that 23 percent of the variance of the leadership
effectiveness score was accounted for by whether the participant was in the treatment, or
the control group.

Scale Mean difference SE difference t df p

BMI −0.075 3.152 −0.024 13.7 0.981

Table I. Emotional IQ −3.25 8.370 −0.388 9.5 0.706
Between group Spirituality 7.27 4.789 1.519 16.5 0.148
scores pretest Shipley score −0.55 4.606 −0.118 8.9 0.908
(treatment – control) Covey 360 −0.14 2.286 −0.060 16.8 0.953
The results of the experiment (Figure 2) indicated that the research H1, whereby a Higher
leadership development intervention (7 Habits training process) would impact leadership education
effectiveness (measured by a 360 instrument), was strongly supported. The treatment and under fire
control groups were similar on all measures at the beginning of the experiment, and the
control group’s mean scores were the same at the end of the experiment as they were at
the beginning. The mean scores of the treatment group on the leadership effectiveness scale,
however, were higher after the training, and also were significantly higher than were those 173
of the control group that did not receive the training during the study.
Further, the results indicated that the treatment and control participants’ leadership
fitness dimensions were stable throughout the study. Consequently, it appears that there
were no control variable effects related to leadership fitness and how the treatment
intervention impacted leadership effectiveness.

Phase 2 culture change process

The business school faculty and staff at the host university developed and voted into its
bylaws a value statement that included seven (7) values. These values included integrity,

Scale Mean difference SE difference t df p

BMI −0.93 3.241 −0.287 13.7 0.778

Emotional IQ 4.32 6.127 0.705 10.5 0.496
Spirituality 7.09 5.340 1.328 12.3 0.208 Table II.
Shipley score 0.99 4.000 0.247 12.5 0.809 Between group
Covey 360 5.50 2.441 2.254 15 0.04** scores posttest
Note: **Significant at 95 percent confidence level (treatment – control)

100

95

90

85

Figure 2.
Box plots of covey
80 benchmark 360 scores
pretest and posttest
for treatment group
Covery 360 (pretest) Covery 360 (posttest)
JOCM accountability, respect, communication, win-win thinking, teamwork and growth. With
32,1 positive feedback from the leadership development participants, and the empirical data
from the Phase 1 experimental field study indicating the training had positively impacted
leadership effectiveness, the Phase 2 culture change process was officially launched.
Specifically, the faculty and staff discussed and voted in a strategy to operationalize the
business school’s value statement with the leadership development intervention on a regular
174 and consistent basis. This included the following activities: every faculty member and staff
in the business school completed the 7 Habits of highly effective people training; every
freshman received 7 Habits training in their introduction to college life credit course; every
MBA student received 7 Habits training in their on campus residency; 7 Values and 7 Habits
banners and wall displays were deployed to inhabit every hallway, every classroom and
every bathroom in the business school building; and faculty-staff meetings and courses for
students were infused with 7 Habits language and techniques to cement in learning
opportunities and to encourage faculty, staff and students to embrace the seven values of
the business school. The focus of these efforts was to instill a culture of collaboration
(teamwork) and creative cooperation (innovation). In essence everyone was encouraged to
see themselves as a leader and understand that their voice counted, and that they could
make an important, creative impact on their situation and the situation of others. The results
of this culture change process that emerged year over year is discussed below.

Phase 2 culture change process – results

The results of the culture change process indicated that the research H2, whereby
an increase in leadership effectiveness would be an instrumental framework to foster
teamwork and innovation for sustained organizational goal achievement was strongly
supported. For example, beginning in 2012, two years into the culture change process,
enrollment in both undergraduate and graduate programs began to increase. The increases
in enrollment continued year over year during the five years covered within this research
study. These enrollment gains are distinctive as the preponderance of business schools in
the USA were experiencing enrollment declines year over year during this same period of
time. Such enrollment declines in business schools began at the outset of the 2007/2008 great
recession and were unrelenting through 2016. Table III depicts the enrollment gains in the
host business school.
Table IV shows the gains in student retention and student placement. Student placement
is defined as graduating seniors who have secured a job in their field, or been accepted into
the graduate program of their choice within 90 days post commencement.

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Undergraduate 592 497 498 546 577 591 595

Table III. MBAa 11 15 18 26 37 41 43
Enrollment gains Note: aEnrolled students at residency

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Retentiona (%) 55.1 58.2 64.4 66.5 68.9 70.2 71.3

Table IV. Placementb (%) 74.5 78.4 79.1 80.7 81.6 82.3 85.0
Retention gains and Notes: aFour year retention rate; bjob in their field or acceptance in a graduate program within 90 days
placement gains post commencement
In terms of teamwork and innovation, the faculty in the host business school initiated a Higher
combination curriculum/marketing research project during the culture change process. The education
research lasted approximately one year, and it led to a vote by the faculty to put two long under fire
standing academic programs into storage, and design and stand up two distinctive, market
driven academic programs. The new academic offerings included a cyber-security
curriculum, which was the first in the State of Virginia and one of the first such academic
curriculums in the USA. With this innovative offering the host business school established a 175
beachhead for enrollment gains and reputation in the field. The second academic program
involved logistics and supply chain management, and this new offering saw enrollment
gains climb briskly from a start-up of zero students to 95 students in five years.
The host business school is an academic college in the third oldest public university in
the State of Virginia, USA. During the culture change process the business school stood up
the first academic research centers in the university’s storied history. The Cyber Security
Center was one of the first recognized as a Center of Excellence in Digital Forensics by
the USA Department of Defense. This center has been perpetually funded by the state since
its inception.
During the culture change process, the host business school also initiated and led on the
formation of a multi-public university logistics research center in the State of Virginia. The
state has perpetually funded this research center with all four public university members
provided budgets that fund faculty positions, research efforts and curriculum development
in this high demand field.
Also during the culture change process, the host business school led the other academic
colleges in the host university on the research and development of an interdisciplinary new
academic offering in Environmental Science that resides in the College of Arts and Sciences.
In addition, this effort led to the establishment of a new Center for Environmental
Science with a virtual lab and educational retreat center at an off campus Chesapeake Bay
tributary site. Enrollment and reputational gains for the university as a whole demonstrate
the business school’s commitment to be part of a campus-wide collaboration related to
innovative initiatives.
Another key result is that the host business school had never previously been recognized
in any national or international academic ranking list. During the culture change process,
the host business school saw four continuous years of having its online hybrid MBA ranked
in the US News and World Report Top 100 MBA list. Similarly, the real estate faculty in the
host business school also emerged during the culture change process as a recognized top
international research faculty for their intellectual contributions to the field. This faculty
research team was last ranked by the Journal of Real Estate Literature at number 14 in the
world in real estate research. This ranking is based on the number of articles published in
the top three peer-reviewed real estate journals in the field.

Limitations and future research

One of the main limitations of the phase 1 experimental study was the small sample.
However, while a larger sample size could be expected to support the main hypothesis even
more strongly, especially in light of the very large values for the effect size indices, results of
using the training in small group settings might be expected to be highly sensitive to the
group’s members’ characteristics. This is the results that were experienced in this study.
In addition, this study could be replicated using other interventions, and even other
measures for leadership effectiveness to check for an artifact resulting from the treatment
and measurement scale coming from a similar source. Finally, the field of leadership, both in
higher education and business organizations, would stand to gain important knowledge
with future empirical studies examining the interplay amongst the constructs of leadership
fitness, leadership development and leadership effectiveness. These three constructs form a
JOCM higher level chicken and the egg question. Which comes first, or rather which one restricts
32,1 or enhances the others? While this study was unable to provide a clear understanding if, and
how such interplay operates, competitive advantage will go to the organizations that figure
this out.
A useful follow-up study to this one would incorporate a longitudinal design that follows
a greater volume sample set of higher education institutions who systematically invest in
176 annual leadership development as a foundation for culture change processes. Data to be
examined would still include the impact of leadership development on leadership
effectiveness, but also look at institutional outcomes over a longer timeframe. It is wise to
note that higher education institutions have significantly different cultures and processes
than corporations, governments and other non-profit organizations. Consequently, it is
logical to think that higher education needs different measures to understand effectiveness
in leadership and culture change. However, there are similarities that may have been lurking
perhaps just outside of our awareness that could be useful in future research. While
business focuses on revenue, the college equivalency is a focus on enrollment which is often
a major financial driver. Similarly, business strives for customer satisfaction which is
considered an antecedent to revenue, and colleges strive for student success and retention
that correlates with the college’s revenue. In a future research project, in addition to
enrollment and retention gains, the question needs to be asked, are institutions experiencing
gains in fund raising and other culture indices like students’ satisfaction with their
undergraduate and graduate experience? Even in this analysis a greater balance between
quantitative and qualitative in-depth measures related to the leader participants, like
participant identity via an academic freedom lens, could enhance the understanding of the
results of a culture change. Future research could also investigate the other long term effects
of innovation in program offerings and basic education costs, particularly as they induce
cost reduction for students, therefore mitigating the burden of student debt. Overall, a
longitudinal study could begin to compare long term outcomes between institutions that do
and do not invest in annual leadership development as part of a culture change process.

Discussion
The findings in this two-phase research project highlighted the fact that business schools
around the world are at a crossroads. Gone are the days when business schools could be all
things to all students. In this study the leadership development intervention enhanced the
leadership skills of the participants who are administrators in the host institution and who
then facilitated a culture change process that emboldened the host business school to try a
different approach on a macro level related to continuous improvement. In this effort a couple
highly distinctive academic offerings with an emphasis on a higher quality student experience
emerged that could, and did, create a differentiating set of results from the rest of the business
school pack. It should be noted that higher education organizational cultures, particularly with
their shared governance and academic freedom, move through organizational change
processes in very different ways compared to non-academic organizations. In this light, the
leadership development intervention was framed in the study to preserve academic freedom
and decision making related to curriculum. For example, the 7 Habits technology was utilized
to encourage the gathering and discussing of varied perspectives from faculty across
disciplines. As the body of the faculty and staff as a whole experienced the advantages of
multiple voices sharing information without bias or judgment, a synergistic effect materialized
in a higher volume of creative options being put on the table for consideration. Once the new
academic offerings from this collaboration were stood up and began to positively impact
enrollment for the college as a whole, a positive energy emanated and kindled a desire to
tackle other stony issues, like budgets and funding. New centers were envisioned, stood up
and funding secured perpetually for these academic priorities. In a success begets success
fashion, collaboration between the business school faculty and faculty in the different colleges Higher
at the host university began to emerge. A new academic offering and research center with education
funding resulted, and was hosted in one of the other academic colleges, demonstrating culture under fire
change influence across campus. While not completely new, this was a distinctive type of
collaboration that has been experienced more regularly since the culture change process
began. Universities everywhere could benefit from a similar culture change process model that
utilizes leadership development as a catalyst for teamwork and innovation. An important 177
objective is to replace the typical silos that create bottlenecks in the academy, and ignite the
interdisciplinary collaboration that can breathe life into innovative high demand academic
offerings. One of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is Think Win-Win. At universities,
this signals the long standing slogan […] a rising tide raises all boats. If it is beneficial for any
functional unit at the university, it will ultimately be beneficial for all the functional units at
the university.

Conclusion
As an experimental field study, our research validated the usefulness of a model of
leadership development to enhance leadership effectiveness. The host organization for this
study was a business school at a public institution of higher education, and higher education
continues to experience its own version of disruption and critical challenges. With ongoing,
rapid changes that are both political and economic, organizational leaders in higher
education need every lever they can pull to lead effectively. This study demonstrated that an
investment in leadership development as part of a culture change process for teamwork and
innovation remains a viable tool in their tool chest to survive and thrive. For example, when
the culture change in the host business school brought progress on a number of important
measures like enrollment, retention student placement, and desperately needed funding, the
faculty and staff in the business school reached out to colleagues across campus. More such
progress unfolded, and then the host business school faculty and staff proactively
connected with colleagues at universities across the state for even more progress on these
important measures. Higher education is under fire, and as a first step in a process of
strategic improvement, leadership development can be a call to rescue.

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Paul Barrett can be contacted at: [email protected]

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