The Changing Nature of University Leadership: Implications for Development Practitioners Developing a Culture of Shared Leadership Prof Richard Bolden Bristol Leadership Centre University of the West of England

Shifting contexts Student fees Employment contracts Global competition Cross sector partnerships Research profile University rankings Economic downturn Professional-isation

What is it like to be a member of an academic institution in the UK? Ambiguity of emotion and experience Sense of vulnerability and exclusion Perceived lack of transparency Growing sense of managerialism Concern about changes in HE sector Bolden et al., 2012

Universities as dual identity organisations Normative Utilitarian Monastic Community Purpose Corporate Enterprise Performance Albert & Whetten, 2004 ‘Effective leaders of dual identity organizations should personify and support both identities. University presidents who were never professors (ordained members of the priesthood) will always be considered managers, not leaders. This deficiency should impair their effectiveness during retrenchment when they must be perceived as the champion of the normative as well as the utilitarian values of the organization.’ (Albert and Whetten, 2004: 112) “The culture of academics is, if anything, distrustful of overt organisational leadership. This appears to be partly about not wanting to swap their professional expertise for what is perceived as the more banal role of management, but also about a more deep-seated resistance to the language of leadership.” (Oakley & Selwood, 2010, p. 6) “The culture of academics is, if anything, distrustful of overt organisational leadership. This appears to be partly about not wanting to swap their professional expertise for what is perceived as the more banal role of management, but also about a more deep-seated resistance to the language of leadership.” (Oakley & Selwood, 2010, p. 6)

Herding cats or engaging citizens? “I think the tendency all over the country is to get more and more managerialist... I think, especially at universities, managers have to hold their nerve and trust their staff... looking around, I think most of us are engaged. There’s a few who aren’t, who’ve either burnt out or become extremely cynical but I’d say most of us are engaged but we’re engaged with the role and with our students, not necessarily with the university. So I think leaders have to work on that because there are times when I was almost alienated from the university and that is not a good thing.” (R17, female, principal lecturer, post-92)

So, what do academics want from their leaders and managers? Enabling environment Boundary spanning & resources Acculturation & mentoring A hybrid configuration of leadership… “A term such as hybrid would be a more accurate description of situational practice that includes both individual leaders and holistic leadership units working in tandem than distributed, because the notion of hybrid signals a mixture of types.” (Gronn, 2009, p. 384) Horizon scanning & framing Support for shared identity