Presidents', Chief Financial Officers’ And Chief Instructional Officers’ Perceptions on the Effectiveness of Strategic Planning

The Effectiveness of Strategic Planning
in Public Community Colleges 

The study examined the effectiveness of strategic planning in public community colleges in California. Strategic planning is used in higher education and public community colleges in California for planning and resource allocation purposes and for accreditation purposes.  Additionally, it serves as an evaluation tool that helps strategic planning helps colleges monitor the provisions of services to students.

This quantitative study design was modeled after Ford (2008). This study surveyed presidents, chief instructional officers (CIOs) and chief business officers (CBOs). The data collection for this study followed the basic principles of collection of a quantitative study.  A web-based survey using Survey-Monkey was used to collect data for this study.  Participants responded to survey items on a 5-point Likert-scale. 

The survey asked participants to respond to a Likert-scale (i.e. 1-Not Effective to 5-Very effective) and included three subscales: part A, part B and part C.  Part A assessed the effectiveness of the institution's strategic planning activities.  Part B assessed the extent to which the strategic planning activities applied to the educational institution’s strategic plan.  Part C assessed the extent of impact of the California community college’s strategic planning process on strategic planning activities.  Each survey part varied in number of items.  Part A of the survey included 11 items, part B included 8 items and part C included 5 items (see Table 1). 

Table 1: 
Calculated Cronbach’s Alpha for Survey Parts A, B, and C

This survey was appropriate for studies related to effectiveness of strategic planning in educational institutions; it has been used in previous studies and has acceptable reliability and validity for use with this population.  Ford (2008) used a survey developed by Williamson (2004).  Acceptable levels of reliability and validity have been demonstrated by Ford and Williamson.  Ford (2008) conducted the reliability of the survey in his study and found a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .94, which indicated that the instrument was very reliable.  According to Aaron, Aaron, and Coups (2009), a good measure of reliability for an instrument in Cronbach’s alpha is generally .90.  It should be noted that the low response creates the possibility of a response bias (see Table 2). 

Table 2: Survey Return Rate

Table 3 below describes the standard deviation and mean of all groups for all three parts of the survey, parts A, B, and C. Descriptive statistics for the survey that assessed administrator perceptions on the effectiveness of strategic planning indicated that presidents had a mean of (M = 3.97, SD = .57) on part A, a lower mean of (M = 2.73, SD = .47) on part B, and on part C a mean of (M = 3.38, SD = .99).  CBOs had a higher mean (M = 3.24, SD = .98) on parts A and C (M = 3.08, SD = .93) of the survey and a lower mean (M = 2.75, SD = .76) on part B.  CIOs had a higher mean on part A (M = 3.23, SD = .96) of the survey compared to part B (M = 2.61, SD = .75) and C (M = 2.43, SD = 1.02) where a lower mean is reflected. The average means of presidents and chief business officers’ results indicated similar means.  Compared to presidents and CBOs, CIOs had the lowest mean of all three groups in part C of the survey. Descriptive statistics are presented in the Table 3. Presidents’ perceptions significantly differed from that of CBOs and CIOs on the effectiveness of the strategic planning process.

Table 3.
Descriptive statistics for Presidents, Chief Instructional Officers and Chief Business Officers

A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) reported that presidents’ perceptions on the effectiveness of the institution’s strategic planning process were statistically different for survey Part A, F(2, 47) =  4.68, p  = .01.  Post hoc analysis using Tukey’s HSD criterion results indicated significant differences in perceptions between presidents (M = 3.97, SD = .57) and CBOs (M = 3.24, SD = .98), however no significant difference was found between CBOs and CIOs.

In part B of the survey presidents, CBOs, and CIOs were asked to rate statements regarding the extent to which each statement applied to their college’s strategic plans.  The results from the one-way ANOVA revealed no significant differences among the three groups, F(2, 47) =  2.21, p =  .80. 

In part C of the survey presidents, CBOs and CIOs were asked to rate the extent of the impact of the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office strategic planning process. A one-way ANOVA revealed a significant difference in perceptions among the three groups F(2, 47) = 4.09, p = .02.  Post hoc analysis using Tukey’s HSD criterion indicated that the perceptions of presidents and CBOs did not significantly differ.  However, Post hoc analysis using Tukey’s HSD indicated that presidents (M = 3.38, SD = .99) and CIOs (M = 2.43, SD = 1.01) differed in their perceptions.  Results from the ANOVA and Post hoc tests can be found in Tables 4 and 5.

The perceptions of senior level administrators in California community colleges regarding the effectiveness of strategic planning were also investigated. The results from this study identified differences in perceptions among presidents, CBOs and CIOs.  In general, survey results revealed that the perceptions of the effectiveness of the institution’s strategic planning process were significantly different among the three groups. 

Table 4.
ANOVA Results for Presidents, Chief Instructional Officers, and Chief Business Officers

Note * p < .05

Table 5.
Tukey HSD Comparison of Presidents, CIOs and CBOs Perceptions 

Note * p < .05                                                                                                             

Participants also rated survey items as they applied to their strategic planning process, and no significant differences in perceptions among presidents, CBOs and CIOs were found.

There are at least two major implications this study. First, it must be noted that the author was only able to identify differences in perceptions where presidents differed from CIOs and CBOs on the effectiveness of strategic planning, therefore, there is a clear need development of opportunities for CBOs, CIOs and presidents to collaborate as a team on strategic planning. Along with this, a second implication is the need to develop opportunities for CBOs to take more of a leadership role in strategic planning; survey results indicated differences in perceptions between CBOs and presidents.  The leadership role of the CBO in strategic planning may help improve perceptions of strategic planning effectiveness.

Finally, the findings of this study are consistent with other studies.  Although this study’s results indicated differences in perceptions among senior administrators, they are similar to other states, therefore, presidents may wish explore creative ways to encourage CIOs and CBOs to take more of a leadership role in strategic planning in general.
It is recommended that senior administrators continue to evaluate the services provided to students and ensuring the strategic plan is satisfying its purpose.  Public community colleges in California are attended by lifelong learners and because they educate close to 3 million students it is important that administrators ensure the effectiveness of the strategic plan.  According to Milliron and Wilson (2004) “the emergence of the community college is testament to the fact that America is becoming a nation of lifelong learners” (p.53) therefore the strategic plan and its effectiveness ensures that planning and resource allocation is helping meet the needs of the students benefitting from community colleges.

More importantly because the accreditation process requires outcomes and evaluation to be an ongoing process, identifying a method to ensure effective strategic planning will benefit community colleges. It is also recommended that CBOs take a greater leadership role in the strategic planning process.  According to Hurley (2003) “CBOs must now lead change as opposed to merely responding” (p. 8).  Hurley (2003) further indicated that the applied, shared and communicated expertise of CBOs, as well as fostering new knowledge within their respective institutions, is now necessary. 

It is recommended that community college administrators work collaboratively at their individual campuses to develop their strategic plan and improve perception of the effectiveness of strategic planning. It is also recommended that presidents encourage greater buy-in from CIOs and CBOs in their institutional strategic planning process. To add to the literature further research should focus on the extent of collaboration among presidents, CIOs and CBOs across public community colleges in California. Also, further research is particularly needed in the area of the extent of leadership CBOs and CIOs take on strategic planning in public community colleges in California.  The literature will benefit from further research on the turnover of CIOs as this will impact the effectiveness of strategic planning.

This is the third study on the effectiveness of strategic planning surveying senior administrators.  All three studies asked senior administrators to respond to a survey and all three studies had consistencies and inconsistencies in perceptions. To strengthen this study a mixed methods approach is recommended.

In sum, it can be concluded from survey results that presidents, CIOs and CBOs differ in some areas of strategic planning and do not differ in other areas. These results indicate groups differ in perceptions in usefulness of strategic planning therefore an ongoing strategic planning process, one that is inclusive of staff representing all campus departments.  Finally, the strategic planning process should be easy to understand by all constituents.

References

 Aaron, A., Aaron, E. N., & Coups, E. J. (2009). Statistics for psychology.  5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Ford, G. (2008). Presidents', chief academic officers', and chief financial officers' perceptions of the effectiveness of strategic planning in North Carolina community colleges (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Dissertations & Theses: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection. (AAT No. 3319373)

Hurley, D. (2003). Developing in the evolving role of chief business officer. Retrieved from: http://www.nacubo.org/documents/business_topics/cbo_evolution.pdf.

Milliron, M. D., & Wilson, C. (2004). No need to invent them: Community colleges and their place in the education landscape. Change, 36(6), 52-58.

Williamson, J. D. (2004). Chief academic and finance officers' perceptions of the effectiveness of strategic planning in Minnesota community and technical colleges. (Doctoral dissertation). University of South Dakota, United States -- South Dakota. Retrieved from Dissertations & Theses: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection. (AAT No. 3127838).