Transformational Leadership and the Proliferation of Community College Leadership Frameworks: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Due to a significant turnover of community college presidents, considerable research has emerged on the topic of community college leadership in recent years. What competencies, skills, knowledge, behaviors, and traits do community college presidents need to possess - especially when they face an unprecedented number of challenges including increased accountability, changing government funding models, and pressure to adopt significant curriculum reform to improve student completion and success rates? An unintended result of the expansion of the literature may be the emergence of a research phenomenon called construct proliferation. Construct proliferation occurs when multiple, competing theories and frameworks are developed to explain a similar phenomenon, which can impede research. One solution to this problem may be to use transformational leadership theory and the five-factor model as theories to help synthesize these multiple constructs. This article reviews the literature on community college leadership published since 2005 to demonstrate how transformational leadership and the five-factor model can inform community college leadership frameworks like AACC's Competencies for Community College Leaders and the major themes that have emerged in the literature on community college leadership over the past two decades. Findings indicate that both theories may be useful in addressing the issue of construct proliferation in the community college leadership literature.