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!