ABSTRACT
The challenge facing university leaders and managers today is a formidable one. This introduction outlines its nature: the unprecedented change in the role and function of universities over the past quarter-century; the internal ramifications of these externally imposed changes and the unrelenting pressure to embrace yet further change alongside the low status and esteem in which university management is held both within institutions and beyond.
The purpose of the book is to help university leaders and managers (both academic and professional managers alike) to meet this challenge, and the introduction describes the author’s own motivation, interest and expertise in this area and explains how the focus of the book is a unique one – written from the holistic (world view) perspective of the university manager per se and the need to master the ‘four knows’: your environment, your university, your department and yourself.
In seeking to provide HE managers with a ‘good practice’ guide to effective management, the introduction – and the book – argue that we ought to have the same professionalism in the way we lead and manage people in universities as we do towards our research and teaching; that ‘managerialism’, in fact, is not necessarily incompatible with collegiality.
