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Superior leadership in higher education makes the difference between institutions that merely survive and those that can truly thrive in today's complex environment. At this time of significant transformation in higher education, academic leaders face intensifying institutional, environmental, and societal challenges, yet colleges and universities often devote limited attention to integrating their approaches to the selection, development, evaluation, and recognition of leaders. Moreover, traditional approaches and criteria used in the selection of academic leaders are often inadequate for predicting their success. Through the process of organizational and leader profiling, as described in this chapter, institutions can better understand the landscape in which the leader will be functioning, providing a more contextualized and useful approach to leader selection, development, evaluation, and recognition.

This chapter offers a dynamic model of authentic leadership that links authentic leadership to situational leadership theory and shows how dynamics in the academic environment, one of the most difficult settings that leaders face, can be addressed. Kindsiko and Vadi detail the concept of situational authenticity, which reveals how authentic leadership takes place via forms of sensing – sense-giving, sense-making, sense-breaking and sense-keeping – in work-related situations. The authors highlight questions for future research: Is sensing the key to success? Are situational ethics valid if they adapt to evolving circumstances? Are situational ethics, in effect, just another way of expressing relativism? If so, can that be reconciled with authentic leadership theory?

The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused significant disruptions to academic activities in educational institutions across countries of the world. In the context of transnational higher education (TNHE), the pandemic has led to major shifts in face-to-face teaching and learning, students’ support services and student engagement. While a number of scholarly studies have examined the effect of the pandemic on education provision across different educational levels, not much has been done to address existing gaps in how academic leaders could support the transformation of the TNHE sector to respond to current disruptions. In order to address these gaps, the current study adopts a case study approach to examine the complex and evolving academic leadership roles in TNHE institutions in Ghana with respect to remote teaching and learning and virtual team activities. The current study addresses the following questions: What academic leadership approaches are essential to developing innovative practices in host TNHE in order to meet the learning needs of students during and after the pandemic? How can transformational leadership approaches interface with institutional theory to provide new direction for transforming TNHE during and after the pandemic? How can academic leadership roles support the transformation of TNHE during and after the COVID-19 pandemic? As a major contribution for addressing gaps in academic leadership roles in TNHE environments especially during COVID-19, the current study proposes an eight-component transformation model. The study concludes by arguing that the challenges facing TNHE especially during the current period of disruptions will require a transformative and innovative academic leadership approach that would ensure that education delivery addresses current and future students’ learning needs.

The contemporary life of an Australian academic has changed in almost every way imaginable in response to the challenges and opportunities emerging from global and national policy agendas. In this context, the subject coordinator11A subject coordinator may also be referred to as a Unit Chair, Unit Coordinator or Course Coordinator at different universities. represents the frontline of a move towards increasingly distributed forms of leading and learning. The knowledge that managing teaching responsibilities does not provide a clear route to promotion (with active research status providing a more well established path) means that academics may proactively minimise the time they spend on the discretionary tasks of leading and managing teaching well. Tasks that include adopting a proactive longer term of curriculum development, team building and teaching innovation, in addition to the more immediate needs for compliance and measurable outcomes. Research from an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project provides evidence that despite lack of formal recognition for many of the discretionary responsibilities of subject coordination, coordinators believe they are executing their job well. This chapter discusses factors that impede discretionary academic leadership behaviours in Australian higher education and suggests strategies to empower leadership and thus improve engagement with discretionary teaching and learning responsibilities.

Leadership is essential in all organizations and educational institutions are no exception, but the concept of academic leadership is unique in higher education and, arguably, is concerned with leadership that extends beyond the organization into the wider world that higher education institutions seek to serve. Traditional concepts of academic leadership are closely associated with individual excellence. Explores the importance of the contingency model of leadership, which suggests that leadership style might change to accommodate changing and differing environments. The way in which teams function in higher education could be closely matched with the concept of the self‐directed team. The concept of the learning organization as an organization which knows how to transform itself to meet changing circumstances defines specific roles for leaders.

Asian Americans (AAs) are underrepresented in leadership roles in academic libraries in the USA. Instead of exploring the factors contributing to their under-representation, the purpose of this paper is to focus on exploring the major factors that have helped AA academic librarians, albeit small in number, to attain, maintain, and advance further into leadership positions in academic libraries.

A survey was conducted to garner responses from AAs who have held or currently hold senior leadership positions in American academic libraries. In total, 12 participants participated in the study: five women and seven men. The participants included three retired deans/directors/university librarians; seven deans/directors/university librarians; one associate dean/associate director/associate university librarian; and one assistant dean/assistant director/assistant university librarian. The participants represented a multiplicity of institutions, including community colleges, Ivy League institutions, and small as well as large private and public universities.

The results of the survey revealed several important success characteristics of AA academic library leaders, including wanting to serve, willing to assume leadership roles, taking non-AA traditional career path, seeking visibility, and developing communication skills.

This is the first and most comprehensive study on AA academic library leaders in the USA. Its goals are to: fill a gap in the literature on AAs and academic library leadership; raise awareness about the challenges facing AAs in their efforts to attain leadership positions in US academic libraries; and highlight some characteristics of successful AA academic library leaders that aspiring AA academic leaders will want to develop.

Leadership in educational settings has been established as a key factor that impacts student learning outcomes, consequently it is important to understand how academic leadership is conceptualised and enacted. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This qualitative study investigated the nature and demands of academic leadership in the New Zealand polytechnic sector by analysing documentary evidence and investigating the perceptions held of the role by 15 academic leaders in four institutions who were interviewed.

Findings of the study highlight the four roles of organisational leadership, curriculum leadership, academic management and academic currency. Participants confirmed that they struggle with ambiguity and tensions. The importance of teams, collaboration and communication are established and the study concludes that an understanding of role complexity to reduce ambiguity and provision of support to perform the role should be key institutional concerns.

This is one of very few research studies into conceptualising and researching the enactment of academic leadership in a polytechnic setting. The findings could impact the design of future leadership development.

Due to the many changes that have occurred over the last two decades, especially in connection with the ‘new managerialism’, academia is a complex working environment. Multiple skills are demanded from professors, such as acting as entrepreneurs and mentors with designated leadership competences. This paper investigates the leadership role of academic group leaders in the context of higher education in Germany. It is argued that a servant leadership approach can enable professors to provide effective academic leadership in the current university context. This is due to its strong human orientation and low power distance and its focus on facilitating academic excellence, creativity and innovation. The discussion notes the importance of developing academic group leaders and describes some practical means of implementing servant leadership in higher education.

Technology has transformed education by providing access and opportunities for learning through online formats. Leadership education has not been left out in this transformation as many higher education institutions offer online leadership courses and programs to college students. This case study’s primary purpose was to develop a fundamental understanding of the program characteristics of leadership programs offered fully online in higher education. The content analysis on 51 online academic leadership programs within 33 universities shows that these programs share similar characteristics in their goals, targeted student populations, and methods of engaging and supporting students in online leadership learning.

Is academic leadership unique? Is it special? Do academic leaders require certain knowledge, skills and behaviours that only a career in academic can develop – or is it fundamentally the same as traditional leadership? This paper explores whether or not academic leadership is special or simple. It starts by defining the context and environment academic leaders find themselves in, moving onto explore characteristics and the overlap with traditional leadership thinking and finally concludes with current trends and a working definition of what academic leadership really is. The purpose of this paper is to explore the uniqueness of academic institutions and whether or not they require certain leadership characteristics which can only be found in academic career progression or could an exceptional individual from outside academia lead academics, researchers, administrators and support staff?

Based around a literature review of current thinking on academic leadership and then the production of a Venn diagram to compares these current trends with more traditional definitions of leadership.

The key findings of this paper include a definition of academic leadership, and how it is similar in many ways to traditional leadership thinking. However, there is a uniqueness centred on the culture and politics of an academic institution which many traditional leaders would not need to work within.

This paper is part of a wider research project relating to academic leadership and Lean Six Sigma and thus the author has searched out papers which support both areas of the author’s interest.

Anyone in a position of academic leadership may be interested in how it relates to traditional leadership concepts and where their field differs from others.

No research current exists which overlaps academic leadership with traditional definitions and characteristics and thus this paper is a new view of academic leadership.