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In 2017 Universities Australia initiated their Indigenous Strategy 2017–2020 which outlined a clear commitment for each university to appoint at least one Indigenous person to a senior executive role. Many universities are yet to realise this promise. In some cases, it is a situation of nil intent to do so, while others have an underlying desire to adhere to their commitment but with minimal success. Drawing on a larger study of Indigenous leadership in higher education, this paper focuses on the experiences of three recruiters who have been responsible for recruiting a senior Indigenous appointment. It provides an understanding of cultural complexities, recruitment barriers and key strategies which the sector can incorporate into their business activities to secure the best person for such positions. Notably, this paper argues there is no template for such positions and they are usually diverse in terms of their responsibilities and strategic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education has existed in Australia for 170 years, yet Indigenous Australians have participated for only half a century. One key change the Australian higher education sector has witnessed over the last decade is the steady increase of people occupying senior Indigenous leadership roles. These positions are indeed relatively new and have not been empirically investigated until now. Reporting on findings from an Australian Research Council funded study on Indigenous leadership in higher education, this paper highlights some of the discrepancies in how the skills of Indigenous leaders are interpreted by the academy, with a hope to challenge the sector's next senior non-identified appointments to ensure that Indigenous people become integral architects in designing the future Australian higher education sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author reflects on various issues of the journal that were published in 2013. He mentions topics covered in the issues including Asian universities, internationalisation, and leadership and skills in education system. He states that the journal focuses on higher education and research related to it.

Leadership matters for the success of large enterprises and this is also the case for higher education institutions and universities. Yet, the public nature of universities and of academia means these institutions are usually highly dependent on external actors, in particular government. Viewed through a lens of distributed leadership, this paper explores how leaders in universities, national academies and government view and rate key changes associated with this pervasive reorientation and reorganisation of public higher education. It asks where do the views of leaders within universities and those outside universities converge and diverge and what patterns are evident in the differences between leaders? Drawing on 116 in-depth interviews and 114 follow-up surveys with senior higher education leaders in Australia, of which just over half were university senior executives, this paper concludes that all leaders surveyed are largely aligned in their views of most issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper locates ‘leadingful leadership literacies’ as a lens for considering changing contexts for leadership and work in higher education management. It makes a contribution to higher education leadership studies by offering an empirical account of expanded notions of leadership. These extend the field beyond those unwilling to critique managerialist knowledge claims. I will argue that not only managerialist practices per se are of concern as we face discontinuous change in the sector – changes which move well beyond rationalist truth claims – but that these remain largely unchallenged and have moved into spaces that should be (re)claimed by leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in expectations of research education worldwide have seen the rise of new demands beyond supervision and have highlighted the need for academic leadership in research education at a local level. Based on an interview study of those who have taken up local leadership roles in four Australian universities, this paper maps and analyses different dimensions of the emerging leadership role of research education coordination. It argues that while there is increasing clarity of what is required, there are considerable tensions in the nature of the coordination role and how coordination is to be executed. In particular, what leadership roles are appropriate and how can they be positioned effectively within universities? The paper draws on the Integrated Competing Values Framework to focus on the activities of coordination and on ideas of distributed leadership to discuss the leadership that characterises coordination. It is argued that without acknowledgement of the influences that coordinators need to exert and the positioning and support needed to achieve this, the contemporary agenda for research education will not be realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines institutional governance of the public university in China, investigating the extent to which government has sponsored the autonomy of universities since the inception of the opening up reforms of 1978. The paper sets out to explain how the party governance system of China is interconnected with aspects of the university’s governance, little commented upon in academic literature outside of China. In particular, it explores how the Presidential Accountability System under the leadership of the University Committee of Communist Party (UCCP) operates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Researchers in the field of teaching and learning in higher education have identified concerns with top-down leadership models. Distributed (or shared) leadership approaches may provide more successful engagement with institutional change agendas, and provide more options to reward and recognise staff leading teaching and learning initiatives. Through empirical research, Jones and colleagues have conceptualised the key criteria, dimensions and values that constitute effective distributed leadership in the Action Self-Enabling Reflective Tool (ASERT), together with benchmarks through which action taken to enable distributed leadership can be evaluated. Opportunities for distributed leadership were incorporated into the design of an Australian university’s professional recognition scheme for university educators. Through analysis of this case study in the context of the ASERT attributes and the benchmarks for distributed leadership, this paper explores the potential for systematic professional recognition of university educators to build institutional leadership capacity in the context of university teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the turn of the millennium, interest in collaborative and distributed conceptualisations of leadership has gathered momentum, particularly in education. During the same period, higher education institutions have been embedded in practices shaped by New Public Management. The resultant reconfiguration of structural arrangements within institutions has led to the existence of two staff groups, professional and academic. The former is often aligned to the rise in managerial practices over claimed academic collegial practices, thus creating conditions for a possible dualistic positioning with the two groups. Distributed leadership and collaboration are claimed to be approaches that overcome this dualism, yet they may also be susceptible to maintaining this dual state and subtly reaffirm embedded interests and structures. As an alternative, a leadership-as-practice approach ontologically shifts the way in which sense is made of organisations. The practice-based model for understanding organisations presented in this paper offers a theoretical and applied framework that incorporates and also goes beyond collaborative and distributed leadership due to its association with practice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Higher education is under pressure to advance from a singular focus on assessment of outputs (measurements) to encompass the impact (influence) of initiatives across all aspects of academic endeavour (research, learning and teaching, and leadership). This paper focuses on the implications of this shift for leadership in higher education. Demonstrating the impact of leadership in higher education requires taking a step beyond measuring the skills, behaviours, and achievements of individual leaders to demonstrating how universities can evaluate the impact of actions taken to build leadership capacity across the institution. The authors extend the outcome of empirical research into how a distributed leadership approach can be enabled and evaluated in Australian higher education – to analyse the effectiveness of these processes for both measuring output and assessing the impact and influence of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Distributed leadership has been explored internationally as a leadership model that will promote and advance excellence in learning and teaching in higher education. This paper presents an assessment of how effectively distributed leadership was enabled at five Australian institutions implementing a collaborative teaching quality development scheme called the Peer Assisted Teaching Scheme. The Scheme brings together expertise from teams of academics, coordinators, and institutional learning and teaching portfolio holders to the shared goal of enhancing learning and teaching quality. A distributed leadership benchmarking tool was used to assess the Scheme’s effectiveness, and we found that (i) the Scheme is highly consistent with the distributed leadership benchmarks, and that (ii) the benchmarking tool is easily used in assessing the alignment (or otherwise) of teaching and learning quality initiatives with distributed leadership benchmarks. This paper will be of interest to those seeking to assess implementations of distributed leadership to improve teaching quality and leadership capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper undertakes a critique of the gendered nature of leadership in modern universities in Kenya. The paper argues that the inclusive nature of African feminism makes it easier for both men and women to join in this discussion since African feminism demands a more holistic perspective that does not pit men against women but encourages them to work together to address gender inequalities. The review shows that there is a need to develop policies and strategies both at national and local level geared towards increasing women's participation in decision making and leadership in higher education in Kenya. The paper provides an opportunity for reflection on problems related to the participation of academic women in leadership in higher education in Kenya and comparable systems through the changing times and settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides insight into distributed leadership by contrasting the oppositional messages found in the literature, and by examining differences in the rhetoric and reality associated with its application. Specifically, the treatment of power and accountability within the distributed leadership theoretical framework is difficult to reconcile. Given the problems associated with the theory and practice of distributed leadership, this paper asks why it is enjoying resurgence at this time? This paper will be of interest to researchers, educators and administrators who are interested in the study and practice of educational leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New models of leadership are needed for the higher education sector to continue to graduate students with leading edge capabilities. While multiple theories of leadership exist, the higher education sector requires a less hierarchical approach that takes account of its specialised and professional context. Over the last decade the sector has explored new leadership approaches based on public and private sector models accompanied by an increase in managerial control, market competition, government scrutiny and organisational restructuring. These changes have increased the gap between academics and ‘other’ staff as academic autonomy has been reduced. This paper presents a distributive leadership approach that places emphasis on collective collaboration rather than individual power and control. It describes a self-enabling tool developed from the experience of four Australian universities that used a distributed leadership approach to build leadership capacity in learning and teaching. The authors identify that while the intent of the original project did not include building collaboration between academics and executive and professional staff, the outcome was recognition of the importance of both a multi-level and cross-functional approach to leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The higher education sector operates in an increasingly complex global environment that is placing it under considerable stress and resulting in widespread change to the operating context and leadership of higher education institutions. The outcome has been the increased likelihood of conflict between academics and senior leaders, presaging the need for more engaged and broader approach to leadership. Based on empirical research into the Australian university sector, this paper contends that a distributed leadership (DL) approach is appropriate for the higher education sector and offers value for supporting effective change. In acknowledging the paradigm change needed to implement a DL approach successfully, the authors present a process model to underpin the shift from a leader-centric to a DL approach. The Sustainable Enabling and Evaluating Reflective DL change process model presents a synthesis of how a systemic change to DL in higher education can occur. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The intensified competition of the global, market-based knowledge economy requires change leadership in universities and colleges throughout the world. National policy makers increasingly see knowledge as a core resource of modern economies and a prerequisite for global competitiveness. By implication, the quality of university leadership becomes crucial, both in the West as well as in Asia which has demonstrated the most rapid growth globally over the past decade. This paper explores the nature of leadership of university leadership in 'Confucian cultural lands'. Due to certain characteristics of Confucianism, university leaders in these countries may possess certain advantages in terms of changing their organisations to become more effective in terms of meeting the goals of national policies. This link between leadership and the cultural context is discussed in terms of both potential benefits and costs with respect to leading East Asian universities in this global era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a call for submissions to the "Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management."

An introduction to the special issue of the journal is presented which focuses on collaborative approaches to leadership in higher education.

Leadership teams have the potential to be extraordinarily effective bodies, undertaking institutional-level decisions and driving performance. There has been limited exploration of the nature of leadership teams in higher education and specifically those at the forefront of academic units where teaching and research is undertaken. This study examined the relationship between composition of school leadership teams and school performance data over a 5-year period in one Australian university. The results demonstrate an agility at the school level to address changing institutional priorities through the composition of school leadership teams and a distributed approach to leadership, providing momentum on which to build. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses resource-dependence theory to analyse how academic mid-level leaders in Finnish universities respond to their changing post-reform management environments. The 2010 university reform and subsequent university-specific management reforms have created new positions and roles for academic leaders. By identifying critical resources, academic leaders recognise essential uncertainties and dependencies and design actions to ensure the continuity of their units' academic functions. Mid-level academic leaders perceive internal and external uncertainties requiring different actions, reflecting their dual status and role. They use their new powers and respect academic values, while promoting their new management roles and competitive behaviour in academic functions. Academic leaders are intra-organisationally influential resource-dependent players. From the viewpoint of university reform implementation, therefore, it is important to know what they emphasise in their leadership role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the notion of emergent organisations in relation to university strategic management and higher education leadership. Topics include aspects of organisational change, the notion of strategic management as a process in higher education institutions (HEIs), and the notion of continuous change.

Pro-Vice-Chancellors (PVCs) form the second-tier leadership of UK higher education institutions. However, their role and position remain under-theorised and under-researched. The present article explores the extent to which a PVC Education role requires core expertise in education or generic managerial skills. Using a mixed-methods approach, we first establish the disciplinary backgrounds of PVCs Education in Russell Group (RG) and post-1992 institutions. Fewer than one in five PVCs Education have a disciplinary background or additional formal training in education. Second, we conducted 24 semi-structured interviews with PVCs Education, Heads of Education Departments and Heads of Learning and Teaching units. These interviews suggest the PVC Education role requires managerial skills, usually acquired in previous headships, as well as academic credibility and knowledge of institutional processes rather than particular expertise in education. In sum, generic managerial skills rather than educational expertise are paramount for understanding the profile of PVCs Education in UK universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender inequity in leadership and management roles within the higher education sector remains a widespread problem. Researchers have suggested that a multi-pronged method is the preferred approach to reach and maintain gender equity over time. A large university faculty undertook an audit to gauge the level of gender equity on the senior decision-making committees. As a result, a gender equity initiative was launched throughout the faculty. Gender equity was then measured a year later. The results showed some improvements in gender equity on committees at the faculty level and within some of the schools of the faculty. In some schools, gender representation became more unequal. The results highlight the importance of specific gender equity policies that can be translated easily into practice and that have leadership support. This case study shows that a modest gain in gender equity is possible if the appropriate institutional and local supports are available. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A national sample of 1515 university administrators (academic deans, directors, associate deans, and department chairs) completed a survey of leadership skills, preparedness for administrative role, and job satisfaction. Overall, participants felt least well prepared in the areas of developing entrepreneurial revenue, developing metrics to document progress, and handling grievances and appeals. Leaders who had taken courses in business administration, human resources/leadership, industrial-organisational psychology, and behavioural psychology reported feeling more prepared for their administrative role than those who had not. Indications of role strain were evident. The majority of participants had become less interested and less enthusiastic about their work since beginning their administrative appointment. Approximately half reported that duties of the administrative role regularly interfered with well-being and quality of life. Only 20.5 per cent of participants reported feeling good at their job every day. Women reported feeling more overwhelmed and less well compensated than men – yet also more skilled in inspiring others and addressing poor performance. Our findings highlight the need for continued leadership development and management training, as well as mechanisms to support leaders in maintaining wellness behaviours. This study provides baseline measures on how academic administrators experience their roles and is part of an ongoing longitudinal investigation of leadership in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the phenomenon of middle leadership in a university context and directs attention to the significance of learning as a central facet of leadership development. Drawing on the reflections of two of the authors as new middle leaders (chairpersons of departments), this article critically examines how middle leaders learn aspects of their role. Two tenets underpin our analysis: learning is fundamentally a social process – we learn with and from others; and learning is relational – what and how we learn is determined to some extent by others and affects others. Our experiences point to learning constraints and affordances arising from events, practices and artefacts. Constraints were largely associated with transmission learning experiences, while affordances were found in collaborative knowledge-sharing contexts that arose asinformation groundsin response to an information need. We argue that both those we lead, and the organisation itself, would likewise benefit from a knowledge-sharing perspective on learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, the tertiary education sector has adopted new administrative management approaches, with the aim of improving accountable and strategic focus. Over the same period, the question of how to build leadership capacity to improve learning and teaching and research outcomes has led to discussion on what constitutes academic leadership. While both these advances are needed, what is missing is integration between the two such that academics and professional staff are engaged collaboratively to achieve learning and teaching and research outcomes that are accountable within a strategic focus. This article builds on research into the use of distributed leadership to build leadership for learning and teaching that resulted in the design of a conceptual framework for distributed leadership. Based on this conceptual framework, it proposes a conceptual blended leadership approach to engage academics and professional staff working in collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reflective essay presents a personal account of experiences and models that have shaped the development of the author as a leader in tertiary education. It is presented from the perspective of a practitioner whose career has led her through academic and administrative roles in Australian and UK institutions into her current position as academic registrar of a large, global university. The author concludes that, in learning to lead, the ideas that have been influential and which she has integrated into her practice are those that resonate with her own understanding of leadership and which are consistent with her values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia’s higher education policy settings have signalled a shift towards marketisation. As a consequence, Australian universities have become increasingly competitive, and as they seek to compete for students in higher education markets, they begin to resemble commercial organisations. This article examines the challenges confronting the leadership team at one of Australia’s fastest growing universities, Australian Catholic University. Specifically, it seeks to address the development of systems to better service future students in an environment where the University is not aware or accepting of the need for change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As accountability stakes continue to be raised in all education sectors, leadership as a factor that can have an impact on improved student outcomes is being studied with heightened interest. This study was conducted from 2011 to 2012 in New Zealand's large urban polytechnics with the aim of investigating the nature and expectations of academic leadership. The conceptualisation of academic leadership in the theory base is fraught with both complexity and paradox and is often presented in contradictory terms. The study identifies images of academic leadership practised by directors of an academic front line, by actors in the front line and supporters on the side line. In relation to polytechnic settings it is concluded that new and varied forms of academic leadership are provided by spreading the role that encompasses both leadership and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated in the broader context of academic administration and senior executive university leadership, this study examined variables correlated with self-reported satisfaction and performance among community college and four-year university presidents in four densely populated north American states. The results of our analysis suggest that personal and institutional demographics as well as measures of institutional discord are significant predictors of self-reported presidential satisfaction and performance. It was found that malleable factors - such as the difference in perception between what 'is' and what 'should be' - are more influential in predicting satisfaction and performance than fixed factors, such as personal and institutional demographics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]