Navigating turbulent waters: academic leadership in times of change and uncertainty Magda Fourie-Malherbe Auxin presentation 29 March 2016
Navigating turbulent waters: academic leadership in times of change and
uncertainty
Magda Fourie-Malherbe
Auxin presentation
29 March 2016
Overview
Introduction
Academic leadership defined
Context matters- defining characteristics of universities as
organisations
Four phases in the development of universities as
organisations and implications for leadership
Distributed leadership as an alternative framework
Academic leadership defined
Leadership a generic concept, meaning different things to different
people.
Academic leaders = primus inter pares, coalition-builder, ‘herder of
cats’?
2008 Australian study: the process of engaging people in change, a
particular set of qualities or capabilities, a group of people working in
complementary and mutually reinforcing ways
Context matters
Academic leadership as a process of social interaction
guiding individuals and groups toward particular goals –
leadership cannot be isolated from its structural and
organisational content (Middlehurst 1999)
Distinguishing features of universities as organisations
Distinguishing features of
universities as organisations
Goal ambiguity or complexity of purpose
Client service
Problematic ‘technology’
Internal fragmentation
Professionalism and specialisation
Environmental vulnerability
Four phases in the
development of universities
1) Elite institutions
Catering for sons of ruling
upper class
Small institutions
Homogenous student
populations
Collegial approach to leadership
Academics rule, committee
system, Senate’s power supreme
2) Democratization and
massification of higher education
• Huge growth
in student
numbers
• More
heterogeneous
student
populations
• Importance of
student
support
• ‘Third space
professionals’
2b) Financial stringency and
accountability measures• Rise of the quality culture – third space professionals
• Universities increasingly run like businesses –
management more professionalised
• Corporatisation of university led to more managerialist
approaches
• New public management approaches – rational and top-
down model of organisational behaviour
• Performance targets to reward and penalise
• Emphasis on excellence and efficiency
3) Impact of technology
• Blended
learning
• MOOCs
• Social media
South African higher education – in
a fourth phase of development?
#Rhodesmustfall/#Feesmust
fall Largest student social movement since democracy
“Emergence of a new scripting of the university in the image of capital and its drive to accumulation” – this latest instalment in the idea of the university “is creating a deep sense of anxiety, alienation, and a feeling of proletarianization” (Lalu 2015)
“It shook up the state, changed the systematic parameters, and began the process of fundamentally transforming our higher education sector” (Habib 2016)
“We will have to live with irresolution” (Mbembe 2015)
Distributed leadership as a
possible way forward
Distributed leadership
Concept originated in social psychology literature in the 1950s
Gained currency in 1990s, particularly in school improvement
literature – more recently in higher education
Comprises a view of leadership as less the property of individuals,
and more as the contextualised outcome of interactive, rather than
unidirectional, causal process (Gronn 2002)
Activity is distributed or ‘stretched over’ multiple people and
leadership is spread throughout the organisation
Distributed leadership (2)
It is not about the agency and power of individuals but structurally
conjoint agency, the concertive actions performed by pluralities of
interdependent organisation members.
Concertive action is more than numerical or additive action which
represents the aggregated effect of a number of individuals
contributing their initiative and expertise in different ways.
Concertive action is about the additional dynamic which is the
product of conjoint activity – the outcome is a product that is
greater than the sum of their individual actions
Distributed leadership (3)
Three patterns of concertive action:
-spontaneous collaboration: people with different skills and attributes interact in productive relationships to complete a task of common interest – leadership is exercised within the relationships as collaborators come to recognize each others skills and attributes
- role sharing: two or more people work constructively within implicit frameworks of understanding – leadership changes as collaborators utilize each other’s skills and attributes to complete different aspects of a task
- formal relationships: working together in agreed structures, enabling leadership roles to be officially recognized
Distributed leadership (4)
Three distinctive elements of distributed leadership:
Emergent property: leadership is an emergent property of a group or network of interacting individuals – this contrasts with leadership as a phenomenon which arises from the individual.
Openness of boundaries: it is predisposed to widen the conventional net of leaders – which groups or individuals are to be seen as contributors to leadership? Academic/support staff/students?
Leadership according to expertise: varieties of expertise are distributed across the many, not the few – numerous, distinct, germane perspectives and capabilities can be found in individuals spread throughout the organisation –if these are brought together, it is possible to forge a concertive dynamic which represents more than the sum of the individual contributions
Distributed leadership (5)
It may be top-down when senior leaders distribute leadership
functions or when leaders share power and responsibilities among
members of the institutional community
It may be bottom-up and spontaneous when collaborating teams of
professionals work together to build networks within their
institutions and with their communities
It leads to a division of labour that takes account of the skills and
attributes of community members and the requirements for
leadership on specific aspects of a task
What could distributed leadership
mean in times of change and
uncertainty?
Less focus on the ‘hero leader’ – leadership emerging
from networks of interacting individuals or groups
Greater acknowledgement of the contribution of a wider
range of stakeholders and role-players through the
opening up of boundaries
Because of the concertive dynamic we can start
generating a vision of the future university that is more
than the sum of individual contributions
Thank you!