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As the world of healthcare changes rapidly, healthcare leaders and managers must hone their leadership competencies in order to remain effective in their organizations. With changes such as the Affordable Care Act, increasing medical school costs, decreased graduation rates, and increased needs for care, how are current and future healthcare leaders adapting? In light of the large-scale changes in the healthcare field in recent years, the purpose of this study was to investigate which National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL) competencies were referenced by exemplary healthcare leaders as most important for success in today’s changing healthcare environment. Interviews were conducted with 26 mid- and upper-level healthcare leaders identified by the C-level executives in their organizations as exemplary performers. Change leadership, self-development, talent development, and team leadership were the top four NCHL competencies most frequently referenced, with thematic analysis revealing additional underlying themes in the exemplary leaders’ dialogue.

Increased demand, limited resources, knowledge gaps, and seemingly less time to produce results are the challenges facing researchers and others in higher education today. Working together across disciplines is almost a requirement to stay afloat in the competitive arena most principal investigators are finding themselves in. This study sought to synthesize existing research on leadership behaviors of these investigators in the agricultural discipline. The sections specifically addressed include team science, discipline structure, boundary work, challenges of interdisciplinary research, the direction of research, and leadership in interdisciplinary teams. After analyzing 32 articles, researchers determined that research should continue to investigate the role of leadership behaviors in primary investigators to continue to improve effectiveness.

The purpose of this study was to begin exploring the nature of leadership behavior and style, as it relates to team functionality. The extent to which the problems we face grow and become more complex; solutions require multiple perspectives, requiring researchers to be prepared to lead large groups of collaborators from a variety of disciplines. This study sought to explore the self-perceptions of principal investigators related to their leadership style and team functionality. Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire developed by Bass and Avolio (1995) and Lencioni's Team Assessment (2002), it was found that transformational leadership was self-perceived to be used the most in contrast to transactional leadership behaviors. With respect to team functionality, absence of trust and inattention to results showed the greatest concern to principal investigators, yet fear of conflict did not.

The objective of this research was to identify Facione’s six critical thinking skills using graduate students blogs as a reflection tool in the context of leadership using structured and unstructured blogs. The skills researched were (a) Interpretation, (b) Analysis, (c) Evaluation, (d) Inference,(e) Explanation, and (f) Self-Regulation (Facione, 1990). It was evident that providing students with guidelines for the purpose of blogging in the classroom was more thought evoking over the duration of the course compared to students following an open reflection. Self-Regulation and explanation were the skills used most consistently among participants. With this knowledge, how do educators encourage students to use the other four skills just as often?

This research aimed to fill several gaps in the tipping literature which has overlooked the server's perspective in identifying and understanding variables that influence a tip amount and therefore where they concentrate their efforts during the service encounter. Furthermore, the extant literature has theorized how or why certain variables influence the tip amount, but these studies fail to capture insight from server's which would supplement the theory and provide a more in-depth understanding of the mechanisms at play.

This study adopts a grounded theory approach using semi-structured one-on-one interviews with tipped restaurant employees who were identified and selected using snowball sampling. Content analysis is employed to code and categorize the data.

The content analysis revealed five categories where servers focus their time and effort to earn tips: service quality, connection, personal factors, expertise and food quality. The server's personality was identified as a variable the tipping literature has largely ignored as a determinant of the tip amount. Server's shift their style of service for groups of eight or more people, and for regular customers, who must dine in the restaurant at least once per week. Lastly, despite the many drawbacks associated with working for tips, servers would not want to replace it with any other method of compensation.

This is the first qualitative study focused on understanding the server's role in the service exchange relationship since McCarty et al. (1990) study. The results provide new insights on the often-studied variables from the tipping literature.