Abstract
This study explored leadership in higher education based on the researchers’ interpretation of the perspectives of a specific group of participants, which refers to middle level academic leaders (MLL) and an interrogation of leadership literature. There are 32 respondents in total including, deans of faculties, associated deans, heads of schools, associated heads and teachers. The major findings of the research are the multiple conceptions of leadership and educational reforms influence on leadership, which have been identified by examining the importance of the roles and current status of MLLs within the university, the activities undertaken by MLLs and the relative importance of those activities, the ambiguities, conflicts and pressures to which MLLs are subject. A key outcome of the investigation is the tension it revealed between how these academic middle level leaders perceive their management roles against their perceptions of their roles as academics. The research also indicated that the multiple conception of leadership from respondents was strongly influenced by traditional Chinese culture. Meanwhile, the recent higher education reforms affected the leadership styles of MLLs, i.e. the potentially further development of collective leadership.
Highlights
Higher education around the world has been experiencing rapid and unprecedented changes over the last quarter century
Given the intention to understand middle level leaders interpretations of their roles, understanding of their responsibilities and experience of their managements, the inquiry is based on the assumption that reality is socially constructed (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) and that people respond to their constructed reality
One of the main research interests of this study is to explore the middle level academic leaders (MLL)’s perspectives on the meaning of leadership: how they define leadership and how they regard themselves as leaders
Summary
Higher education around the world has been experiencing rapid and unprecedented changes over the last quarter century. As Ramsden (1998) indicated that the fundamental change was from an elite system of higher education, largely confined within national boundaries, to a mass higher education system in global business. Finances, structure, purposes, students, governance, technologies, the amount of available knowledge and its diversity have all changed. These largely external factors have had and will continue to have huge consequences for how universities are run, what university staff do and how academic leaders work. Chinese Higher Education has continued to evolve. Over the past two decades, universities in China have some remarkable changes, such as great expansion in university students, amalgamations of universities, reform of funding sources, administration reforms and new models of university management, have raised the challenges for university leaders at all levels, which are reflected in many researchers’ studies (Duan, 2001; Mok, 2005; Hare and Thomas, 2002; and Yang, 2000)
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