Managerial Decision Styles of Deans in Institutions of Higher Learning

Numerous studies in the area of Management and Leadership indicate that one's decision making style (DMS) is reflective of one's leadership style. Using the Decision Making Styles Inventory (DMSI) developed by Rowe and Boulgarides (1992), this paper attempts to explore and report the managerial DMS among 54 deans from four randomly selected Malaysian public universities. The scores derived from DMS inventory were categorized into four decision styles namely: Directive, Behavioural, Analytical and Conceptual. Results revealed that a majority of deans adopted at least one very dominant or dominant DMS intensity level for Behavioural DMS along with one or two back-up decision styles. These findings indicate that most of the deans possessed more than one style category implying that they have considerable flexibility in their managerial DMS. These findings have implications for leadership training.