ABSTRACT
Only the foolhardy and the unreflective would dismiss this scale of criticism as just so much whingeing. The shame, as well as the irony, of course – as the private sector readily acknowledges – is that it is indeed people who make all the difference. In management parlance, the quality of a company’s people is the only significant strategic variable for any enterprise. It is their contribution that most affects bottom-line performance. The surprise is that it has taken the university sector so long, not to acknowledge it, but rather to recognize and act on it. The UK Bett Report (1999) on pay and conditions in HE still felt it necessary – as late as 1999 – to recommend that ‘the management of people should be given greater priority at all levels of the HE system’. Not before time, UK universities have finally put in place a strategic framework for enhancing and developing leadership and management in higher education, with the 2003 White Paper paving the way for the creation of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. Committed to a vision of world-class practice in leadership, governance and management, the LFHE has sought to develop individual leaders, build institutional capacity, nurture networks and communities of learning, commission applied research and disseminate and champion good practice to burgeoning effect (LFHE, 2003; 2007).
