Average Tenure of Academic Department Heads: The Effects of Paradigm, Size, and Departmental Demography.

The authors appreciate the assistance of Jeanne Logsdon in collecting some of the data for this study. The comments of Barbara Reskin on an earlier presentation of the results are also appreciated. The average tenure of academic department heads in a sample of forty departments on two campuses of a large state university system over a twenty-year period was examined. Average tenure was found to be positively related to the level of paradigm development characterizing the department. Average tenure was found to be negatively related to departmental size, and was also found to be related to interactions of the level of paradigm development with the seniority mix of the departmental faculty and the size of the department. Both paradigm level and departmental size had greater effects on average tenure in the second ten-year period, when resource scarcity was greater. No significant effects due to campus differences, formal terms of office, or method of selecting the department head were observed. The results are consistent with a theory of administrative turnover emphasizing the effects of consensus in enhancing administrative stability.,