Time management and leadership styles: an empirical study of long-term health care administrators

Is there a relationship between the type of leadership style employed by long-term health care administrators and the effective use and management of time? This paper describes a 1989 study of 188 administrators of skilled nursing facilities and intermediate care facilities in Connecticut. Two self-rating instruments were employed: the Executive Time Management Inventory (Hartley, Kramer, et al.) and the LEAD-Self instrument (Hersey and Blanchard). Four hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance to examine relationships among time management, leadership style, size of facility, administrator experience, and cost factors. Statistical procedures included Pearson Product-Moment correlations, analysis of variance, t-tests, and partial correlations. Results of the study included (1) time management effectiveness increased as administrators gained more experience; (2) no significant relationship existed between type of leadership style and time management effectiveness; (3) women administrators perceived themselves as significantly more effective time managers than men did; (4) most health care administrators employed the same primary leadership style: "selling," which is defined as high relationship/high task; and (5) institutional size was not related to the time management effectiveness of the administrator. The findings have implications for pre-service and in-service training and for future studies in health administration education.