Perceived leadership styles of faculty deans in Libyan public universities.

This research develops a process for understanding faculty leadership in the Libyan contexts, the Libyan Collective Leadership process (LCL). This process makes substantial contributions to knowledge especially as regards: a) deeper understanding of situated leadership styles and performances of faculty leaders; b) the knowledge that faculty deans enact a family-oriented leadership through mainly transformational and transactional leadership styles, and exhibit characteristics of related leadership styles such as distributed, democratic and collaborative leadership.This research uses semi-structured interview of faculty deans in addition to Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ)-based surveys of faculty staff regarding the leadership practices and performances of the deans, to explore the perceived leadership styles of faculty deans in selected Libyan universities. The field study consists of 20 deans/faculties in 3 universities. The research methodology is mainly qualitative and is based on the interpretivist paradigm, since the research aims to elicit the subjective opinions and understandings of faculty deans and staff regarding the leadership styles and performances of the deans.The data analyses consist of two main approaches: a) a qualitative analysis of the deans' responses to the interview questions, using NVIVO software to implement a General Inductive Approach for analysing qualitative data; and b) use of arithmetic mean scores of faculty staff Likert ratings of the deans' leadership characteristics to analyse the MLQ responses from the faculty staff, using SPSS software.These findings have important implications for leadership theory, practice and development in Libya and similar Arab countries, which are explained in detail in the thesis. Importantly, the findings show that the LCL process links the leadership practices of deans with the specific influences which the Libyan context imposes on the leadership dynamic in the universities, such as the Islamic religion, the collectivist culture of the country, the socialist political ideology, and resource constraints in a third-world country.