ABSTRACT
The distinctive characteristics of HE structures and management culture and of senior manager team members are presented, followed by limiting factors to leadership and management, as identified by studies and senior staff themselves, in order to place the subsequent discussions on staff management approaches in proper context.
Contributors to the topic give a picture of the collection of characteristics which, together, make university staff management distinctive, and of the factors which can have management-limiting effects individually. For example, contributors talk about what leadership means in a university and to what extent a leadership hierarchy is required, emergent and distributed leadership are discussed, along with the assessment of personality and quality of potential candidates for staff management roles. ‘Academics debate, question, and challenge’, they work with ‘formal and informal leaders’, within decentralised university management structures; they ‘pursue their own valued ends’, although ‘joint collegial endeavours are required’ and some assume ‘the more senior you are the better leader you are’. However there are reportedly ‘substantial numbers’ of British universities ‘where the academic community is in effect excluded from any major questions of institutional policy’. Academics are also partly ‘led’ by ‘influential colleagues’ from other institutions. The important aspects of communication, of autonomy and academic freedom are introduced as is the need for academics and other staff to ‘feel they are understood and supported’. Business management and school leadership study results are used to support HE study findings.
