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Aim/Purpose: The goal of this essay is to critically reflect on the emerging trend for PhDs by Prospective Publication (PbPP) in Australian Business Schools and to explore its appropriateness for fledgling academics. Background: The PbPP is a relatively new and increasingly popular alternative to traditional PhD by monograph (PbM). It is the idea that a doctorate can be completed by writing a series of papers that are published, or close to being published, as journal articles or book chapters. For students, it offers the chance to get a head-start on their publishing careers and helps them find their first academic jobs. For supervisors working in an academic environment increasingly characterized by ‘publish or perish’ dynamics, it guarantees meaningful rewards from doctoral supervision. However, despite the attractiveness of publishing during candidature, it is a very different way to complete a doctorate with many challenges for students, supervisors, and institutions. Methodology: We adopted critical collaborative autoethnography. Through this method, we reflect on our experience supervising and administrating PbPP students and integrate our reflections with the literature on PbPPs to highlight policy concerns and our position on them. Contribution: We argue that the primary goal of the PbPP is to produce students who can conduct research collaboratively after graduation, as opposed to people who can conduct independent research, although the two outcomes are not mutually exclusive. We also argue that assessment of PbPP should be significantly enhanced to determine the nature of the student’s contribution to the thesis, their understanding of research design, and their broader understanding of their subject. Finally, we argue that despite the attractiveness of PbPP, it can only be successfully attempted by students with elite levels of intellect, dedication, critical analytical skills, language skills, resilience, and patience and supervisors with expertise in the field of study, experience of publishing different types of paper, familiarity with the working of the journal publication process, and workload capacity. Findings: PbPP theses should be examined by viva voce. Viva voce examinations of PbPP theses should determine (1) the nature of the doctoral candidates’ contribution to the thesis, (2) whether it is sufficient for the award of a doctorate, (3) the contributions of the papers to advancing the field of research, and (4) the students’ understanding of the theory in their field. Viva voce examinations of PbPP theses should seek to discover the student’s ability to contribute to collaborative efforts of research teams. PbPP students should also sit an examination of their understanding of research philosophy, design, methodologies, and related topics. It should be externally set, administered, and marked by an independent examination board. PbPP candidates need to demonstrate excellent ‘research English’ language skills before commencing. Recommendations for Practitioners: PbPP candidates need excellent intellectual skills – as a rough guide, probably in the top quartile of doctoral candidates. PbPP candidates need to be resilient and able to cope with failure, criticism, and rejection. PbPP candidates need high levels of patience. PbPP candidates should be encouraged to produce their first manuscript early in their candidature. PbPP supervision requires supervisors with advanced levels of subject knowledge, research skills, and publishing outputs. PbPP supervision requires expertise across various forms of research and types of output. Due to the wide range of skills and experience, PbPP supervision is likely to require a team approach. Recommendation for Researchers: As the PbPP grows in popularity, it challenges educational researchers to explore this emerging phenomenon. Does it take a particular type of person to thrive through this process? Does it need supervisors with particular characteristics? How does the experience of PbPP supervisors differ to the experience of PbM supervisors? Do PbPP graduates differ in their abilities to PbM graduates? Impact on Society: People graduating with PhDs typically enter influential and important jobs in society. It is vital that they have the knowledge, skills, and abilities that the qualification confers. In Australia, the PbPP challenges this credibility due to issues of co-authorship, selective study, and shallow assessment. These matters need to be understood and rectified to prevent a loss of credibility in Australia’s Higher Education institutions and its graduates. Future Research: Are there any differences in the knowledge, skills, and abilities of PbPP and PbM graduates? Studies are needed of the characteristics prospective PbPP students need to be successful taking this doctoral route. How does the nature of supervision differ between PbPP and PbM? What is the impact on the skills and abilities supervisors need and the implications for workload? What jobs do PbPP graduates go into and does this differ to PbM graduates? What resistance will the proposals made in this essay meet?

Purpose The purpose of this review is to argue that the way that perceived employee misfit (PEM) has been measured in quantitative studies does not capture the construct identified in qualitative studies. Design/methodology/approach Through reverse citation analysis, this study reveals how low levels of value congruence became the currency of PEM in quantitative studies. Findings This study finds that in the absence of alternatives, researchers have taken low scores of value congruence as a measure of misfit. However, there is limited evidence to show that PEM relates to values, supplementary conceptualization or interactions with the organization (rather than interactions with other employees, tasks, etc.). In addition, the most commonly used instruments measure degrees of similarity, not disparity, making the interpretation of PEM-related data unclear. Combined, these factors raise construct validity concerns about most quantitative studies of PEM. Research limitations/implications Given the upsurge of interest in PEM, there is an urgent need for greater clarification on the nature of the construct. From the analysis, this study identifies two key dimensions of studying PEM that create four distinctly different ways of conceptualizing the construct. Originality/value This study highlights a series of major methodological weaknesses in the study of PEM and reveal that almost all published quantitative studies of PEM are actually studying something else; something whose nature is very unclear.

Although teaching in Business Schools takes a theory-driven perspective, there are multiple different interpretations of what this means. We make a contribution by examining how management educators define ‘theory’ and explore how differing definitions lead to variations in the way that teaching is conceptualised and designed. We adopt phenomenographic methods to reveal a five-level hierarchy of theory definitions ranging from simple descriptive notions of ‘theory as an idea’ to more explanatory definitions with causal and practice implications. This hierarchy shapes the way management educators design their teaching with those with the most sophisticated understanding of theory being the most practically focused in their teaching. Although all the interviewees view theory as having an interventional purpose to shape or change managerial action, management educators are haphazard in the ways they teach students to apply theory. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the essential–non-essentialist debate in management education and suggest avenues for future research.

Person–environment (PE) fit is one of the most pervasive guiding frameworks for management scholars and practitioners alike and key to our understanding of employees' emotions, attitudes, and behavior in the workplace (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005). The study of workrelated PE fit (“fit,” in short) focuses on the antecedents and consequences of the (perceived) compatibility between people and their work environment (Kristof, 1996) and covers a wide array of research on topics such as job satisfaction, job stress, vocational choices, recruitment and selection, and organizational culture (Edwards, 2008). A continuing trend in this literature is the emergence of studies looking at fit from a temporal perspective (e.g., Boon & Biron, 2016; Cooper-Thomas et al., 2004; De Cooman et al., 2009; DeRue & Morgeson, 2007; Jansen & Shipp, 2019). The purpose of this review paper is to document, review, and integrate the temporal fit literature and highlight avenues for future research. ispartof: Journal Of Organizational Behavior vol:44 issue:2 status: Published online

Although the similarity-attraction hypothesis (SAH) is one of the main theoretical foundations of management and industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology research, systematic reviews of the hypothesis have not been published. An overall review of the existing body of knowledge is therefore warranted as a means of identifying what is known about the hypothesis and also identifying what future studies should investigate. The current study focuses on empirical workplace SAH studies. This systematic review surfaced and analyzed 49 studies located in 45 papers. The results demonstrate that SAH is valid in organizational settings and it is a fundamental force driving employees’ behavior. However, the force is not so strong that it cannot be overridden or moderated by other forces, which includes forces from psychological, organizational, and legal domains. This systematic review highlights a number of methodological issues in tests of SAH relating to the low number of longitudinal studies, which is important given the predictive nature of the hypotheses, and the varying conceptualizations of attraction measurement.

Universities are hybrid organizations, which increasingly embark in entrepreneurial activities as a means of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). These include outreach and community engagement activities such as sponsoring cultural or sporting events. With our conceptual expository argument, taking a multi-theoretical approach, we contribute to the event management and social entrepreneurship literatures by examining how and why universities engage in UNSDGs-oriented events. This is important as little is known about how they contribute to the UNSDGs and use events. We question the altruistic assumption underpinning their engagement. Informed by institutional theory and strategic management value-based literature, we explore why they have taken this route and suggest self-interest rather than altruism is driving their decisions to engage in social entrepreneurship. They are value-creating strategies. We argue it is serendipity that many interpret universities’ social entrepreneurship decisions and the events that flow from them as acts of altruism.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to integrate research conducted on work values, political values and cultural values to develop a new heuristic model of values that can be applied to workplace outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that draws upon the work values, political values and cultural values literatures and the “similarity leads to attraction” and “dissimilarity leads to repulsion” hypotheses to advocate an integrative conceptual model spanning these constructs.FindingsIntegrating the three types of values with the underlying hypotheses of “similarity leads to attraction” and “dissimilarity leads to repulsion”, an internally consistent two-factor model of values is developed. This heuristic model argues that one set of factors causes value congruence and its associated outcomes and a different set of factors causes value incongruence and its associated outcomes. By conceptualizing value congruence and value incongruence as a two-factor theory, the idea is advanced that people do not assess value similarity and value dissimilarity unidimensionally, but these are two separate dimensions supported by different theoretical hypotheses and processes.Originality/valuePrevious conceptual work on values has isolated different types of values and considered them separately. A contribution is made by integrating the three main streams of values research. The paper is the first to advocate a two-factor theory to values and the first to incorporate the “similarity leads to attraction” and “dissimilarity leads to repulsion” hypotheses. The model repositions the focus for future research on value congruence and incongruence.

Person-organization (PO) fit is broadly defined as the compatibility between an individual and their employing organization that occurs when the characteristics of the two entities are well matched. It is related to higher levels of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, job retention, organizational citizenship behaviours, and job performance. In recent years, there has been a significant and hastening increase in the number of journal articles published in which person-organization fit is a major feature of the study. This study documents the historical and contemporary nature of this field using bibliometric methods to provide an overview of PO fit research and to analyse contemporary trends. After screening, 887 refereed journal articles were surfaced in the Scopus database that featured PO fit. Descriptively, this study identifies leading journal articles, authors, countries, and collaborative networks. Analytically, the paper identifies and discusses major and emerging research themes. These include an increase in studies exploring PO fit and its impact on employee engagement during their employment. Other contemporary themes include an increasing interest in ethical issues related to PO fit and the interaction of PO and person-job fit. These three topics are critically discussed. Conversely, the analysis shows a lessening of the occurrence of PO fit studies focusing on the early employment phases of recruitment, selection, and socialization. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which PO fit research is changing, the positive skew in PO fit research, and the limitations of this study.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the mechanisms that explain the complexities Indonesian higher education (HE) academic leaders (ALs) experience in performing leadership roles. The research addresses the questions: How do Indonesian ALs perceive their roles in HE? What are the challenges facing Indonesian ALs in their roles in the Indonesian HE context? To what extent does gender impact how ALs act and are perceived?Design/methodology/approachIn sum, 35 ALs from six Indonesian universities representing top executive positions were interviewed. Data were analysed thematically using a retroductive process followed by a series of on-site member-checking activities to establish credibility and authenticity of the findings.FindingsThe religious principles ofamanah(the “altruistic calling” of their functions needing dedication, commitment, and passion) unique to the Indonesian cultural experience influence ALs views of leadership. ALs face role constraints due to resource limitations, experiencing a double bind, while harmonising differences due to ascribed social status and position.Research limitations/implicationsSupportive structures effective for academic leadership practice must be created, further studies on male ALs’ roles in promoting the leadership ascent of female ALs and promoting work-life balance will improve ALs’ visibility and salience in steering institutional growth.Originality/valueThis is the first study to focus a critical lens on the complexities of context-based leadership practice as it is influenced byamanah. Layers of constraints confronting female ALs were documented due to exigencies of gender role expectations and resource limitations, yet they exhibited paternal navigational skills beyond the maternal and pastoral calling of their roles.

Multiple motivations lie behind the creation of this special issue on the rhythms of academic life and academic careers. First and foremost, anyone who has been in academia for any length of time will appreciate how working in the industry has changed. The second motivation for this special issue was to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the much cited and fondly remembered compendium of contemplations on academic life entitled, Rhythms of Academic Life: Personal Accounts of Careers in Academia.

Research has portrayed person–environment (PE) fit as a pleasant condition resulting from people being attracted to and selected into compatible work environments; yet, our study reveals that creat...

Conventional approaches to leadership in sport management regard leadership as a leader-centric phenomenon. Recent advances in the generic leadership literature have highlighted the way that people construct their own understanding of leadership and shown that these influence their assessment and responses to people they regard as leaders. This observer-centric perspective is collectively known as the social construction of leadership. In this conceptual paper, we demonstrate how this emerging theoretical approach can reframe and invigorate our understanding of leadership in sport management. We explore the research implications of this new approach, reflect on what this might mean for teaching, and discuss the practical ramifications for leadership in sport management that might flow from the adoption of this approach.

In this editorial, that accompanies this special issue “Experiencing fit and misfit: Process views, dynamic interactions and temporal considerations”, the guest editorial team reflects on the press...

This paper advocates an innovative approach to help leadership students analyze, capture, and remember the nature of their authentic leadership. This developmental activity was inspired by the Japanese film, Wandâfuru raifu (After Life) (Kore-Eda, Sato, & Shigenobu, 1998), in which the recently deceased are asked to recall and relate a memory that symbolizes all that is important to them. After this memory is replayed to them the recently deceased move on to the afterlife and keep the memory prominent in their minds for eternity. This activity is applied to authentic leadership by asking leadership students to recall their family, personal, and work histories as they relate to their leadership. To bring this activity up to date and into the real world, the students are asked to tell their story directly to a camera in front of a green screen. In postproduction, images related to the students’ stories are keyed in to replace the green screen thereby creating powerful memories of the factors influencing the students’ authentic leadership. This new technique is proposed as an integrative and memorable activity that captures and synthesizes insights from other authentic leadership exercises while focusing on the actionable lessons. Viewing of the film prior to the teaching event offers the additional benefit of creating an atmosphere of quiet contemplation and reflection in students’ minds.

Value congruence is an important determinant of human behavior in organizations. It influences positive states for workers (e.g., a sense of belonging, job satisfaction, and positive affect) and is...

We make a contribution to the debate on the theory–practice gap by examining how management educators define ‘theory’ and then exploring how differing definitions lead to variation in the way that ...

Academia has changed over the last decades and so have academic careers. In a 2019 special issue of the journal Academy of Management Learning and Education, we have brought together a set of paper...

Purpose This paper aims to discuss leadership development with social construction as the underpinning theory. Design/methodology/approach This is an autoethnographic study of the author’s insights from teaching leadership from a social construction perspective. Findings The social construction approach to leadership looks and behaves as a threshold concept in leadership. It takes students’ learning to a higher level, opens up a new curriculum, and changes their understanding of leadership for good. Originality/value The discovery that the social construction approach to leadership looks and behaves as a threshold concept suggests that there is something fundamentally important with this perspective. It positions the social construction approach as an overarching theory that helps students re-evaluate, appreciate, and find value in traditional leadership theories.

In this, my last editorial, I want to reflect on how my own teaching has changed during the 5 years I have been involved with the Journal of Management Education as either an associate editor or an editor-in-chief. And changed, it has. These changes, which I shall describe later, are partly due to being exposed to many new and exciting ideas in these pages, partly due to joining a university where experimentation, risk, and academic freedom are celebrated and encouraged, and partly due to the increasing managerialism in business schools (White, Carvalho, & Riordan, 2011; Winter, 2009). I have found myself propelled toward more effective and exciting teaching, but this is strongly tempered by the need to entertain students. Although I fully acknowledge that learning and entertainment are two sides of the same coin, I have begun to wonder if the emphasis is shifting too far toward entertainment. I have written this editorial in the hope of stimulating discussion on this topic that goes to the core of our pedagogic and andragogic philosophies.

One of my greatest sorrows as editor is that so many manuscripts we receive are rejected at the first hurdle. About half of all submissions that come in are immediately “desk rejected” by me or one of the associate editors. Contrary to popular belief, editors do not like rejecting submissions. We are not sadistic monsters who thrive on the misery of others. Instead, we tend to be sympathetic souls who give up their time because we want to help people develop their manuscripts to publishable standards. We love reading new and interesting ideas, and we live in fear of “White Page Fever,” the terrible dread that one day there will be nothing to print. Our main concern is to find papers to publish, and the fact that half of our submissions so miss the mark that they cannot even be sent out for review means that a huge pool of talent is misdirecting its efforts. There is already a lot of advice available on how to prepare an interesting manuscript. Our website supplies guidance on our requirements and what we are looking for. We regularly present at conferences and workshops, and the associate editors and I are always happy to give advice on email or over the phone. Despite all of this, as just mentioned, we still desk reject half of the submissions that come in. This advice clearly is not connecting with many authors. In reflecting on why this might be, I find myself thinking that telling people what to do might come across as both patronizing and a little abstract. So I think it is time to change tack and make it easier for those determined to receive a rapid negative decision. Describing the real reasons why papers are instantly rejected might be a stickier way of getting the message over. So, based on our immediate rejection decisions over the past 2 years, here are my Top 10 Tips to ensure that your beloved manuscript is returned to you posthaste. I hope you find these useful.

Traditional approaches to leadership assert that leadership is a definite quality of leaders. In contrast, the social constructionist approach conceptualises leadership as a quality of observers. The goal of this paper is to show how this philosophical base can be used to create a teaching strategy for leadership. In this strategy, there are three learning objectives: understanding the philosophical approach; revealing students’ lay theories of leadership; and, skill development. The lessons revolve around understanding how leadership perceptions form so that students appreciate how they are influenced and, in turn, how they might influence other people's perceptions of themselves.

Looking back over the year that was 2013, one subject dominated management education discussion like no other topic has ever done so before. That subject, of course, is the MOOC, or to give it its full name, Massive Open Online Courses. Over the past 12 months, MOOCs have arrived like an alien invasion threatening to overturn centuries of tradition in education. And just like a scene from Mars Attacks! there are supporters waving “Welcome to Earth” banners while others are lining up the tanks. Yet there is one strange feature of MOOCs, despite the cacophony in the corridors and at conferences; there has been silence in the academic journals. This is simply because data are scarce and only just becoming available, and the necessary time required for thinking, writing, reviewing, and production. Next year, and probably for several years after, MOOCs are likely to dominate the pages of education journals and the Journal of Management Education in particular. In this editorial, I want to explore the initial hype and hyperbole about MOOCs as a way of setting the scene for the future.

Clothing businesses have given considerable attention to the way in which clothes “feel” on the body (Sun, Fan, Wu, Wu, & Wan, 2013). They invest hugely into developing fabrics that are cheap yet still provide a high-quality finish that will give consumers a sense of pride in wearing the garment (Farzandi, Razipour, Mousazadegan, & Saharkhiz, 2013). Such an approach is undermined when the fabric frays, is too abrasive, or molts. A key indicator of clothing molting is the buildup of lint in wearers’ navels (Steinhauser, 2009). Accordingly, the phenomenon of the buildup of navel lint is attracting increasing levels of research and an understanding of the factors influencing its sedimentation is emerging. A review of the material engineering, clothing and fabric sciences, human biology, and nanofiber literatures reveals that there are two gaps in our knowledge. First, no one has conducted longitudinal studies of navel lint deposition. All studies published to date are cross-sectional providing limited insight into its sedimentation. Second, a similar review reveals that the author’s own navel lint has never been studied in a rigorous or scientific manner. This study addresses these two gaps with a longitudinal empirical study of the buildup of my navel lint. Taking note of previous criticisms (e.g., Steinhauser, 2009), air pressure, temperature, and humidity were controlled for, and new and old garments were employed. To give confidence that the differing garments were the prime causal factors (T. Albert, 1984, cited in

Every instructor is beset with the problem of keeping up-to-date with an everincreasing body of literature, to both the syllabi taught and innovations in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Remaining current in the management and organizational behavior syllabi is greatly helped by the presence of review articles in the various literatures. But such devices are uncommon in the field of scholarship of teaching and learning reflecting the emerging and still-maturing nature of our field. Recognizing the value of review articles, the Journal of Management Education (JME) is taking a lead in encouraging their production covering all aspects of management education (Billsberry, 2012). Many topics in the field of management education have now become sufficiently mature, large, rich, and complex that scholars will benefit from review articles that identify the salient, the innovative, and the cutting-edge ideas. The purpose of this short article is to create a typology of review articles, explain the nature of the various types of review article, and focus attention on review articles in the field of management education. Ultimately we hope that you might be inspired to write a review article in the management

This paper focuses on convergence and divergence dynamics among leading British and French business schools and explores how the pressure for accreditation influences these dynamics. We illustrate that despite historical differences in approaches to management education in Britain and France, these approaches have converged partly based on the influence of the American model of management education but more recently through the pursuit of accreditation, in particular from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and the European Quality Improvement Standard. We explore these dynamics through the application of the resource-based view of the firm and institutional theory and suggest that, whilst achieving accreditation is a necessary precursor for international competition, it is no longer a form of competitive advantage. The pursuit of accreditation has fostered a form of competitive mimicry reducing national distinctiveness. The resource-based view of the firm suggests that the top schools need a more heterogeneous approach that is not easily replicable if they are to outperform the competitors. Consequently, the convergence of management education in Britain and France will become a new impetus for divergence. We assert that future growth and competitive advantage might be better achieved through the reassertion of national, regional and local cultural characteristics.

My first encounter with the use of film in management teaching came in 2000 at the Academy of Management meeting in Toronto. Joseph (Joe) E. Champoux ran a professional development workshop on the use of film in management education. About 40 people were dotted around a large, spacious room listening intently to what Joe had to say. He showed clips from four or five films and explained how he used them to illustrate theory in his teaching. It was an interesting and engaging session, as Joe’s sessions always are. At an appropriate moment, probably when Joe was changing tapes over, I introduced myself to the chap sitting behind me. I asked him if he used films in his teaching. His response succinctly captured my own situation: “No. I’d love to, but I wouldn’t be taken seriously by my colleagues. I’m hoping no one saw me come in.” As I looked around the room, I sensed furtiveness in the rest of the audience as if the people were attending some form of illicit entertainment. Everyone seemed to sitting individually, quietly, desperately trying not to attract attention to themselves. This attitude toward the use of film in management education was replicated in the articles of the time. In these, judging by the published output

In management education, 2013 is the Year of the Daring; a year for those daring to be different. “Daring to Be Different” is the bold theme of this year’s Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference (OBTC) taking place in Asheville, North Carolina, in June. Compared with other conferences, OBTC has always had a different edge to it, but this year they are turning up the amp to 11 and creating an innovative and supportive space for management educators to explore new ideas (http://obtc.org/content/2013). The Academy of Management is similarly daring to be different this year with the launch of a new conference focused on management teaching. Called the “Teaching and Learning Conference at the Academy of Management,” or more catchily, the TLC@AOM, the one-day conference is situated on the Sunday between the professional development workshops and the scholarly program. The press release says that the “2013 TLC@AOM will (1) focus on practice to improve teaching and learning, addressing the needs of both novice and veteran members, and (2) represent all disciplines in AOM Divisions and interest groups with interdisciplinary topics and sessions.” In addition to these two daring innovations, 2013 saw the first “unconference” in management education. The Research in Management Learning and Education (RMLE) Unconference was held on February 1, 2013 at Bond

This paper contributes to the debate regarding whether or not management is, or should become, a profession. Using the principles of dialectic logic, arguments for the thesis that management is a profession and the antithesis that management is more akin to an art or a craft are critically reviewed. Aristotle's intellectual virtues episteme (science), techne (skills) and phronesis (practical wisdom) are introduced as a synthesis to this debate. Rather than characterizing management as a profession, it is argued that management is a contextual practice that requires a blend of all three intellectual virtues.

Strategic matters are extraordinarily complex and involve many different and interlinked processes and influences. This makes the subject difficult for students lacking managerial experience as they are unaware of the intricacy of the problems being discussed. Strategy requires not just a theoretical understanding of the subject, but also a practical feel for business and organisation. We argue that films can help the instructor because they offer elaborate multidimensional and multi-layered contexts which mirror the reality of business. Moreover, their powerful narratives aid the retention of ideas and encourage engagement with issues. To illustrate the appropriateness of films in teaching strategic management, we review the strategy curriculum, highlight some of the teaching difficulties and show how using films could help students’ learning.

Most leadership theories assume that leadership is a quality of leaders (e.g., trait theory), or a response to environments (e.g., situational theory), or a combination of both (e.g., contingency theory). In all these approaches leadership is something knowable and definite. However, after years of research there is no agreed definition of what leadership is or any universal agreement about who might be regarded a leader. This paper outlines an alternative approach in which leadership is a contested construct and describes two engaging teaching techniques that align pedagogic approach with the underlying theory. In doing so this paper makes a case for the adoption of socially-constructed theories in leadership education.

This paper reports on a qualitative study exploring how distributed patterns of leadership manifest themselves in project teams within a Higher Education institution. The emphasis is on both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of distributed leadership, thus providing an account of the nature of distributed leadership in higher education and the factors which were found to enhance and inhibit its occurrence and effectiveness. The findings are presented in a model of distributed leadership which seeks to provide an integrative account and a framework for further study. The conclusions focus on both the theoretical implications for the study of distributed leadership and the practical implications for HE institutions wishing to promote effective leadership.