Boundary-Spanning Leadership in Higher Education

Abstract

Executive Summary The adaptive capacity of higher education is not only rooted in the ability for institutions to change one by one, but in a systems level capability which depends upon a specific form of leadership. This leadership process is constructed at the boundary between higher education at large and its interface with society. In this article, we examine the ways that this capacity is represented in the current issue of the Journal, and discuss how it might be intentionally cultivated as an asset critical to higher education's future. ********** Higher Education Leadership: A Changing Systems-Society Perspective The history of higher education reveals a remarkably adaptive nature. The academy, thought of in its collective sense, seems to have an inherent ability to respond to the changing needs of societies. This capacity to change, demonstrated over hundreds of years in a wide variety of different cultural and national contexts, is a reflection of continuous adaptation among individuals and institutions, but it is also rooted in an important special property enjoyed and evident at the level of the enterprise, a particular form of leadership. Not only has higher education adapted to societal changes, it has also changed the societies in which it exists. This ability to be changed and at the same time to influence change in society, also requires a form of leadership, one rooted in higher education's deeply held traditions, values and sense of purpose. This article probes the idea of leadership as a capacity that is inherent in those systems which have the capacity to renew themselves in response to changes in their environments while influencing change in the environment at the same time. This leadership can be thought to take place at a boundary of the system where it interfaces with the society in which it resides. Understanding Higher Education as a Leadership System Robert Birnbaum (1988) suggests that systems share come common characteristics. They have interacting components, elements that, in effect, compose the system by their independent and interdependent activities. In the case of the system of higher education in the United States, these interacting components would be colleges and universities that operate as independent (and occasionally interdependent) entities, and all of the associations, agencies and direct constituents and influencers that comprise the higher education effort in the United States. Systems have boundaries which, in another way, define and limit them. In the case of the system of higher education in the United States, these boundaries are established by the licenses, charters and accreditation processes that separate colleges and universities from other institutions and activities within our society. Systems have inputs and outputs that characterize them as well. Within the system of US colleges and universities, inputs include (for example) students, employees, financial resources, buildings and curriculum. Outputs include graduates, research findings and services to society. Birnbaum goes on to observe that systems can be described as being either generally closed or generally open in their characteristics; and that among systems we can find those that are tightly coupled, (that is having internal structures that relate directly and predictably in response to a change anywhere in the system), or loosely coupled. When we speak of the of higher education in the United States, we are speaking of individual colleges and universities, but also of all colleges and universities together. We are speaking of individual licenses, charters and missions and of the collective license, charter and mission. We are speaking for individual faculty, students, programs and investments and we are speaking of the whole investment and the whole benefit of higher education in the United States. …