ICMA continues to work on ways to help our friends in the academic community. In this pilot, we're helping students and researchers with their research. We will be sharing short (no more than 10 minute) surveys quarterly. If you have a few minutes, take a short survey for the profession!

This survey below will help John Wood, associate professor, University of Central Oklahoma, and vice mayor, Guthrie, Oklahoma, who is presenting his research at the ICMA Annual Conference in Kansas City.

Comparing Managers and Student Management Philosophies

This survey compares working managers, like yourself, to what students are learning about working managers, to find possible similarities and differences in management philosophies. These differences, even small ones, can fester if not acknowledged and can create tension within your organization, for example, after an employee is hired or fired. My research will help create a toolkit to identify how employees and students actually think about management.

More specifically, this survey is about paradigms from text books and how managers really think, and we will better understand how you view management. It’s completely anonymous.

With this data, we can gain a greater understanding of how your current and future employees see the world. The better we understand ourselves and our organizational culture, we can improve retention by managing and reducing internal conflict. This research is very early in this exploration.

Complete the survey here.