الملخص الإنجليزي
The study aims to identify the characteristics of the administrative leaders in the Ministry of Social development; the common types of leadership actually practiced; the skills required for the successful accomplishment of work in the social institutions, and the most important problems that face the administrative leadership. Finally the study attempts to come out with recommendations that might assist the administrative leaders in the Ministry in their pursuit to improve their performance. The study relied on the social survey as the main research strategy. The survey was conducted through a specially designed questionnaire administered to 89 administrative leaders in the Ministry of Social Development at different administrative and regional levels. SPSS was used to process and analyse the collected data and different statistical parameters were used in presenting the results obtained. Such parameters included frequencies, percentages, standard deviation, t-test, and One-Way Anova.
The most important results obtained include: 1. Although a significant number of women (about 18%) were found to occupy leading administrative positions, administrative leadership in the Ministry still dominated by men (about 82%). Moreover, the majority of administrative leaders (55%) are youth in the age group 35-45 years old, with 74% of them holders of at least a university degree. 2. The ranking of common types of leadership according to the respondents' preferences reveals that legal leadership comes on top, followed by democratic leadership, and finally technocratic leadership. 3. The results demonstrate that the administrative leaders believe that both professional and social skills are important and necessary for working in social institutions. 4. Leaders identified a variety of environmental and societal problems related to their positions and constraining their work. Such problems include insufficient training programmes and incentives, lack of professionals in some departments, and slow adoption of technological innovations. 5. In order to upgrade administrative skills, the respondent recommended more training programmes, adequate incentives, clear criteria in selectingadministrative leaders, and more opportunities for participation in professional confere.
