Lida Liu

Year of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Name

International Educational Leadership

Department or School/College

Phyllis J. Washington College of Education

Committee Chair

William P. McCaw

Commitee Members

Erica Allen, John Matt, Liqin Tang, Mike Perry

Abstract

In the era of globalization and a thriving knowledge economy, higher education emerges as a pivotal vehicle for driving social progress and shaping new development paradigms. Departments, as the fundamental units of teaching, research, and social service, occupy a crucial position within the higher education system. The implementation experiences of department chairs, encompassing the opportunities and challenges they encounter, the strategies and actions they undertake, as well as the support they receive and obstacles they face, hold significant importance for gaining insights into the execution of educational mandates at the grassroots level and enhancing the efficiency of higher education management.

This study was designed to examine the experiences of department chairs in implementing educational mandates within Chinese higher education using a qualitative methodology. The central research question was: How is the implementation of educational mandates experienced by department chairs in Chinese higher education? Utilizing the descriptive phenomenological approach outlined by Giorgi (2009), this study analyzed the experiences of 14 department chairs from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China. Through the phenomenological psychology method, this approach formed an overall structural description given by the participants, so as to better presented the essence and the invariant structure of the experiences.

The findings of this study revealed that educational mandates' coercive and prescriptive nature does not lead to mechanistic rule-following in practice. Instead, it triggers strategic execution by department chairs at the grassroots level. The ambiguity of mandates, formalism, and structural resource scarcity collectively create an institutional pressure. Within this context, department chairs develop a complex strategic toolbox, including layered mobilization, substitutive solutions, formal compliance, and resource substitution. When implementing educational mandates, department chairs assume multiple roles as implementers, interpreters, and leaders. They flexibly adjust strategies in response to different contexts through certain leadership styles and situational triggers. Additionally, the study showed that the incremental organizational change driven by department chairs is fundamentally a risk-hedging strategy. Its core lies in finding a dynamic equilibrium between mandate compliance and organizational stability.

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