Abstract
This project will develop a stimulus paper exploring the key leadership measures that universities must take if they are to create real improvements in Academic Enterprise with their external partners and impact for society as a whole; while leadership will be the key thrust of the paper important governance and management issues relating to this leadership will also be covered. The authors will explore key questions of interest to our target audience and the Leadership Foundation: How is good academic leadership for Reach-out recognised and articulated? How do academics practice, promote, learn and resist the identity of being a ‘good leaders’? How can any resistance be overcome? How do individual biographical experiences and institutional contexts shape academic leadership, hinder and/or promote good leadership practice? What is the role of Senior University Managers and Council Members in promoting and supporting improved University Reach-out? What is the significance of inter-relationships and interactions for practice and promotion of good academic leadership? How have good academic leaders negotiated and overcome barriers and challenges in their real-life leadership practices?
The authors are basing this paper on previously collected data drawn on an interpretivist epistemology that prioritises the interpretation of real life, ‘lived’ experiences and enables research participants to articulate in their own ways what leadership, and leadership practice means to them (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2008). Sixty semi-structured interviews have been completed with internationally recognised university leaders of academic enterprise and their support teams from across the world. The interviews have addressed issues of: leadership style and practice (going beyond the deferential to probe for understandings of what makes leaders successful), with practical examples, grounded in real life experience of individual leaders’ own good and bad leadership; influences and relationships with others in their career development and creative team-working (including exploration of how these may have enabled or constrained their own leadership practice); and the barriers and challenges for good leadership, including practical examples of how these barriers and challenges have been overcome.
References
Clark, A, Holland, C, Katz, J and Peace, S (2009): 'Learning to see: Lessons from a participatory observation research project' , International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 12 (4) , pp. 345-360.
Kvale, S and Brinkmann, S (2008): InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing 2nd ed. Sage: London