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Research and Development in Higher Education Vol. 23: Flexible Learning for a Flexible Society

July, 2000, 755 pages
Published by
Lesley Richardson & John Lidstone
ISBN
0908557477
Abstract 

Motivated by the need to clarify what senior colleagues meant by "academic leadership" when asked to design a program to develop academic leaders in their university, the authors sought guidance from their colleagues and the literature. However, an extensive literature review and semi-structured interviews with a range of academic staff within their institution revealed a lack of consensus as to the meaning of academic leadership. Despite this, some interesting issues emerged from the interviews. These included consistent differences between the views of those in formal positions of management responsibility within the institution and those of the 'rank and file'. Advice from interview participants suggested that any developmental activities that ignored these different perceptions were sure to be unsuccessful. In addition to reporting the results of the literature review and interviews, this paper begins to explore a definition of academic leadership which embraces these multiple perspectives. Further, it discusses the implications of such a definition for academic leadership development.