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Management and Leadership in the Contemporary University

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DOI: 10.1080/1360080042000290177

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Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management
Vol. 26, No. 3, November 2004

Management and Leadership in the

Contemporary University
Jill Yielder* and Andrew Codling
UNITEC Institute of Technology, New Zealand

This paper proposes a model of leadership within tertiary education based on research into
expertise and institutional distinctiveness. It builds on two contrasting styles of institutional
development. Firstly, in the traditional university (higher education) sector, promotion to senior
management positions has tended to be based on academic prowess, largely relating to research
capability. The result is senior academic leaders who may not be well suited to line or operational
management. By contrast, in the traditional polytechnic (vocational education and training) sector,
promotion to leadership positions has tended to be based more on perceived managerial qualities,
and the resultant leaders may be more inclined to be good managers without displaying overt
academic leadership.
A model of shared academic management and leadership focused on departmental/school level,
based on research into the nature of professional expertise, is therefore proposed which brings
together the strengths of both of the above styles. This model develops the responsibilities of both
the academic leader and the operational manager and explores their symbiotic relationship. The
performance of associated administrative functions is also considered in regards to the overlap
between the administration occurring in these roles and that of designated of®ce administrators.
The implications of this model on organisation structure and culture and on staff promotion and
career development are also addressed.
The application of this model to contemporary tertiary institutions that focus on vocational and
professional education as a point of distinctiveness in a competitive tertiary education market is also
explored. In particular, the potential advantages of this model for dual sector institutions which
bring together the strengths of the higher education and the vocational education and training
sectors are discussed.

Introduction
The management and leadership of tertiary education institutions have been the
subject of increasing uncertainty as institutions have grappled with the profound
external changes that in¯uence the way they function (Meek & Wood, 1997; OECD,
1998) The collegial approach of the traditional post-war university has given way to
the corporate management in¯uences of the last twenty years. Advocates of the former
decry the in¯uence of the latter, and vice versa. This article examines some of the

*Correspondence: Postgraduate Health Science Programmes, School of Health & Community

Studies, Unitec New Zealand, Private Bag 92 025, Auckland, New Zealand. Email: jyielder@-
unitec.ac.nz

ISSN 1360±080X (print)/ISSN 1469±9508 (online)/04/030315-14

ã 2004 Association for Tertiary Education Management
DOI: 10.1080/1360080042000290177
316 J. Yielder and A. Codling

notions of academic management and leadership in tertiary education institutions

that have contributed to this tension. In particular it discusses the current context of
change within tertiary education and how leadership and management are incorpor-
ated within both traditional and post-modern universities and polytechnics. It then
proposes a new model of shared leadership, illustrated at the school or departmental
level. This model builds on the strengths of current approaches while attempting to
minimise identi®ed dysfunctions.

Part One: Contextual in¯uences

Universities have undergone profound change in their recent history, to the extent
that it could be argued that they now have very little in common with their twelfth-
century ancestors. The transition from elite to mass higher education after the Second
World War has been central to this change as an international phenomenon driven by
demographic, social and economic pressures.
Over the last 40 years, both the Australian and New Zealand higher education
systems have undergone more growth in participation than had occurred in the
previous hundred years. In Australia in 1960 there were around 53,000 students
enrolled in higher education institutions; in 2000 this ®gure had reached 695,485.
Similarly in New Zealand, enrolments have increased from 27,300 in 1960 to over
287,400 in 2000.
A critical element of this dramatic growth in university participation was the role
played by central governments, which embraced and supported this growth and
committed increasing total public expenditure to the higher education sector,
supplemented by increasing levels of student contribution. Initially this growth was
fully funded by central government, but progressively the level of unit funding has
decreased as the level of participation has increased. With this increased expenditure
went increased central planning, coordination and control, in what was to become a
dominant feature of the university systems of the United Kingdom, Australia and
New Zealand (McInnes, 1995), and which had a pervasive in¯uence on the evolution
of leadership, governance and management within institutions.
The 1990s, in particular, were also characterised by the growth of competition and
market forces in higher education. Paralleling, and to some extent fuelling this
change, was a progressive move towards recognising the private bene®ts of higher
education. These signi®cant developments in higher education have taken place
against a state-institution tug-of-war over the fundamental issues of institutional
autonomy, academic freedom and accountability. At the same time, a similar trend
has occurred within institutions, with increasing tension between collegial and
managerial practices on the one hand, and individual academic freedom and personal
accountability on the other. There is little argument about the impact of these and
other effects of the continuing growth in participation in higher education. According
to Shattock:
 Management and Leadership in the Contemporary University 317

¼ it remains a fact that in nearly all countries universities are suffering something of an
identity crisis under pressures of rapid increases in student numbers, falling unit costs,
increasing government control, and some evidence of rising public disenchantment.
(Shattock, 1995, p. 157)

There are several important interrelated consequences for the future of higher
education in these trends, all having their origins in the move to mass higher
education. First, as participation in higher education increased over the last forty
years, so did the size of the government's ®nancial contribution. This has promoted an
increase in the requirement for institutional accountability and related central
bureaucratic intervention. These effects are interpreted by many as major impedi-
ments to academic freedom, which still remains a central tenet of the traditional
university raison d'eÃtre.
Secondly, mass education has promoted a progressive loss of distinctiveness
amongst universities. As enrolments increase, and at the same time unit funding falls,
the disposable income of universities decreases, creating fewer resources to commit to
institutional identity. Major stakeholders such as students and funding agencies may
then be less able to readily distinguish one institution from another and, perhaps
worse, tend to attribute the faults of one institution to them all. Unfortunately the
same does not tend to be true when an individual institution is regarded as
outstanding.
This loss of distinctiveness has been accentuated by the ideological drive by many
Western governments to increase the ef®ciency of institutions (and therefore reduce
the costs to government), through the promotion of a competitive market environ-
ment. This competitive market was designed to encourage diversity and student
choice. In reality, the reverse has happened in many countries, with market-driven
funding systems actually breeding conformity rather than diversity, as individual
institutions all react in the same way to funding system changes.
Thirdly, the value of a quali®cation has tended to diminish as it loses its
exclusiveness. Before higher education became so accessible, an undergraduate
degree was highly valued, and its recipient had considerable status in society. Today,
when such degrees are commonplace, the status of the graduate is lowered, and the
value of the degree is diminished in the eyes of employers. As a result, more students
are looking to postgraduate quali®cations to re-establish their status and employment
edge. Work-related quali®cations in particular, have been raised in academic level,
and in the process, institutions offering professional quali®cations have assumed more
and more of the characteristics of a university. The rapid expansion of non-university
institutions which offer degrees has been a major contributor to this trend.
The consequential drive for these non-university degree-offering institutions (such
as the Australian colleges of advanced education and the polytechnics of the United
Kingdom and New Zealand) to seek university status has therefore been in part
promoted by the trend of ``quali®cations creep'' at an institutional level. It has become
an issue of parity of esteem for these institutions and their non-university degrees,
relative to the established universities, and the most obvious means of eliminating this
problem is for these institutions to become universities.
318 J. Yielder and A. Codling

Paralleling the growth in participation, and the complementary growth in

government funding, there has also been a developmental trend away from
institutional independence and ``separateness'' towards more integrated national
systems as governments have sought to establish some control over their growing
investment in higher education. While the immediate post-war university operated
with a reasonable degree of institutional independence, and certainly a low level of
government interference, that can certainly not be said of the modern university. This
is clearly the case in Australia and New Zealand, where the respective governments:
¼ have asserted control over the universities through the dismantling of co-ordinating
authorities, the strategic application of direct and indirect ®nancial steering mechanisms,
and the implementation of accountability and quality assurance processes (McInnis,
1995, p. 40).

The new world of information technology has also had a profound effect on the
university. It has reduced the university's monopoly on information and knowledge.
The post-war university still retained a virtual monopoly on knowledge creation and
preservation, and maintained its self-proclaimed position as the keeper of the nation's
culture and identity. Research was the unquestioned responsibility of the university,
and new knowledge was created, tested and passed on by university staff who were
intellectual in their approach, set their own curricula and regarded their academic
freedom as an unchallengeable right. This has not been sustained in the contemporary
university. In the face of large increases in student participation, knowledge is
arguably becoming commodi®ed and regulated, curricula standardised, and academic
freedom has been reduced. The self-contained intellectual has become the faculty
academic, balancing personal research and teaching objectives with those of the
institution, and conforming to externally driven expectations about the quality of his
or her performance.
These trends have had a profound in¯uence on the way institutions are managed.
Central to these changes is the signi®cant shift from collegial to managerial structures.
De Boer (1996) and others such as Miller (1994) and Dearlove (1995), note that the
collegiate decision processes of the ``old'' universities no longer meet the needs of a
modern institution, and are being replaced by a more corporate management model.
Signi®cantly, de Boer notes that this change has not been necessary for the ``new''
universities (the former polytechnics), which already have a governance structure that
could be described as `managerial' (Dearlove, 1998). This view is supported by
Fulton (1997) who suggests that these universities, as former polytechnics, are, by
virtue of their history, marked by their strong managerial institutional cultures. This
will become a central issue in the development of a leadership model for a dual sector
institution.
According to Neave and Van Vught (1991), the growth of ``managerialism'' in
higher education institutions is characterised by three key features:
d the increasing in¯uence of external stakeholders, particularly those that exercise
in¯uence over institutional income, such as government;
d a strong emphasis on strategic planning at an institutional level; and
 Management and Leadership in the Contemporary University 319

d the adoption and adaption of attitudes and techniques characteristic of corpor-

ations.

In this managerial environment, leadership tends to exist as a consequence of

hierarchy, and is ascribed to the individual (or small group) at the apex of the
hierarchy. This individual (or group) is assumed to set the tone of the organisation
and to establish its of®cial objectives. In other words, it could be argued that academic
leadership has been subsumed by corporate management practices on the basis of an
unchallenged assumption that leadership automatically goes with position in a
management hierarchy.
It is against this complex background of changes that the notions of management
and academic leadership need to be rede®ned.

Part Two: Leadership or management?

The concepts of ``leadership'' and ``management'' are complex and open to numerous
de®nitions and interpretations (for example, Law & Glover, 2000). KekaÈle (2001)
sees them as two complementary aspects or systems of action. According to this
author, a loose conceptual distinction is often made between them, where manage-
ment refers to an orientation towards results and goals, organising tasks and systems,
while leadership alludes to an orientation towards human relations and organising
people. In an academic context however, leadership and management functions have
been closely integrated at departmental or school level. It can be argued that at this
level both the academic leadership role and the management role require aspects of
``leadership'', which in this sense is not something that can be written into a job
description as a `function'. It may be more appropriately regarded as a quality that an
individual brings to the position (Belbin, 1997). In using the term ``leader'' it is
essential to acknowledge the inspirational, galvanising effect that a leader should have.
As much as anything, leadership is about creating a vision of what might be, and
fostering a culture that supports and can achieve that vision. A leader doesn't have to
do it all, but must articulate an inspiring vision that compels others to ``buy in''.
The terms ``academic'' and ``managerial'' leadership are therefore ascribed to the
ful®lment of different aspects of leading or decision-making. Both are involved in
``providing direction, purposes, visions and goals for the future'' (Belbin, 1997, p. 5),
but for different purposes. In the literature, the general outline for a management role
in an educational setting is fairly consistent, for example, managing ®nances, staff,
space and resources, plus strategic and operational planning (Ketteridge, Marshall &
Fry, 2002). Academic leadership is less well de®ned. General characteristics are given,
such as the responsibility for mission, direction, inspiration, building teamwork and
setting an example (Law & Glover, 2000). Speci®c activities in an academic setting
primarily focus on aspects such as responsibility for academic direction and priorities,
teaching, scholarship and research, consultation with students (Harman, 2002),
320 J. Yielder and A. Codling

decision-making about academic programmes, course delivery, content and sched-

uling (Anderson, Johnson & Saha, n.d.).
Authors seem to agree that academic leadership and managerial leadership can be
separated out fairly clearly according to context (Kotter, cited in Belbin, 1997). In
Law and Glovers' (2002) opinion, leadership, management and administration
require different, but overlapping skills, knowledge and abilities. However, on an
operative level they are often poorly differentiated. Role confusion and overlap
between these roles and also that of administrators, may give rise to con¯ict of
interest, inequities in workload and inappropriately applied expertise. Inevitably this
contributes to inef®ciencies, diminished job satisfaction and reduced quality of overall
``management''.
Handy's comment (1978) that contemporary organised society tends toward being
over-managed and under-led appears to remain relevant, particularly because many
academic leaders have gravitated into managerial roles at the expense of any real
leadership. Given that when translated into an academic setting, the roles of
management and academic leadership can be seen to be quite different, some of the
role confusion which occurs is due to job descriptions which incorporate both aspects,
requiring an individual to be good at both. While Belbin (1997), amongst others,
observes that there are some individuals who combine the necessary traits of academic
leader and manager, roles are frequently quite distinct, needing different foci and
abilities. It could be considered that combining the two roles, or allowing one to
become the other by default or force of circumstances, is not an appropriate way to
develop an organisational structure.
In the literature on expertise it is quite clear that expertise doesn't translate easily
across domains (Yielder, 2001, 2003). To be an expert for example, in academic
leadership, does not mean that that person will have the skills to be good at
management and vice versa. Authors such as Rolfe (1996) maintain that management
responsibilities dilute expert practitioners' (in this case, academic leaders') abilities to
perform effectively as experts in their ®eld. Further, if they attempt to do this there
could be dif®cult con¯icts of interest due to ®nancial constraints, which limit their
ability to pursue ideal practice (Fulbrook, 1998).
Managerial leadership positions in academic institutions re¯ect organisational
hierarchy and are therefore appointments made from above. This aspect of leadership
is vested in the position, and as such involves a person being ``in'' authority. This kind
of authority is linked with power or in¯uence. According to Kleinig (1982), a person is
said to be in authority ``by virtue of holding an of®ce or position within an institutional
structure ¼ it is not the particular person so much as the of®ce or position which is
invested with authority'' (p. 212). Conversely, academic leadership could be
considered to be bestowed from below, and therefore vested in a person because of
their expertise and knowledge. As such, this person is ``an'' authority. As de®ned by
Kleinig (1982, p. 212) ``a person is said to be an authority by virtue of the (supposed)
extensiveness or intimacy of his/her knowledge ¼ with respect to some particular ®eld
of inquiry or subject-matter ¼ relative to a given group or community''. One critical
problem inherent in the notion of being in a position of authority is that the of®ce
 Management and Leadership in the Contemporary University 321

holder may in fact lack the knowledge presumed by the of®ce. According to Kleinig,
this is often concealed by the institutionalised procedures for producing and
identifying them. For example, consider the following extract from research
conducted by Anderson et al. (2003, p. 52):
In a University, there are 3 major players: staff, students and management. The staff
assesses students' performance, and the students assess staff performance. The
management assesses staff performance, but neither the students nor staff gets to assess
management performance.

Alternatively, a person who is ``an'' authority, may be promoted to a position of

authority for which his/her expertise is inappropriately matched.
If management positions are invested with authority and status in an educational
institution, academic leaders may be marginalised, leading to a devaluing of the
critical teaching-learning-research-practice nexus in education institutions. Academic
leaders who carry responsibility for academic development and direction, without
authority or status, may experience loss of job satisfaction and disillusionment.
Further, there seems to be an inevitable tendency for those identi®ed as having
academic leadership positions to inherit increasingly high administrative workloads,
largely in response to the signi®cant increase in compliance requirements from
internal and external agencies. Administration, in the context of this paper refers to
those day-to-day operational tasks that underpin organisational policy and strategic
goals. With growth in adminstrative demands of this sort, it becomes dif®cult to
achieve an appropriate balance of leadership, teaching and research, which in turn
limits the possibility of academic promotion, and hence status in the academic, as
opposed to managerial sphere.
A further point of tension relates to the ``power'' that results where managers
control the discretionary decisions relating to resources (Freidson, 1987). If managers
do not value and incorporate the expertise of their academic leaders within their
management practices, leadership will not be effective. Where institutional hierarch-
ies are conspicuous, as they are in many contemporary higher education institutions,
this tension can impede the development of teamwork and the recognition of
leadership qualities beyond those bestowed by formal position.
The de®ning characteristics of the modes of academic and managerial leadership in
tertiary education institutions that can be summarised from this discussion are shown
in Table 1.
There appears to be a broad correlation between the origins and history of tertiary
education institutions and the relative valuing of the elements of management and
academic leadership within them. In more traditional universities there is a tendency
to promote elements of academic leadership at the expense of management, while
post-modern institutions with a more youthful heritage tend to emphasise the latter at
the expense of the former. A professorial role in a traditional university incorporates
academic leadership, with management occurring almost incidentally depending on
the personal qualities of the professor and administrative staff (Bowen & Shapiro,
1998). According to Latchem and Hanna (2001), such universities are ``organised
322 J. Yielder and A. Codling

Table 1. Characteristics of managerial and academic leadership in tertiary education

MODE 1 LEADERSHIP MODE 2 LEADERSHIP

ACADEMIC MANAGERIAL

Leader is `an' authority, based on Leader is `in' authority, based on

d discipline knowledge
d experience
d peer and professional recognition
d personal qualities
d expertise ± teaching, research,
programme development
d team acceptance
Leadership context: Collegial
Formalisation: bestowed from below
Leadership is vested in the PERSON
because of their personal characteristics,
and perceived expertise
d position in hierarchy
d job responsibilities (e.g. ®nancial
management, human resource management,
planning)
d control (e.g. budgets, resources,
accommodation)
d delegated authority
d power
Leadership context: Corporate
Formalisation: appointed from above
Leadership is vested in the POSITION,
and the person may or may not have the
capabilities to exercise this leadership

anarchies'' and essentially incapable of being ``planned''. However, to some degree

this is rationalised because of the dif®culty of applying business management to
universities in a practical way, given that it ``assumes the existence of a clearly
identi®able bottom line and close control by supervisory personnel. Neither is a
powerful or practical tool in universities'' (Bowen & Shapiro, 1998, p. 125).
According to Harman (2002), the value placed on academic leadership in
universities is changing. Over recent years in Australia, universities have moved
from a largely collegial, to a much more corporate style of management, paralleling
the style characterising non-university institutions, such as the polytechnics in New
Zealand. This stance appears to favour management over academic leadership within
a hierarchical structure, with ``management teams'' primarily consisting of staff
holding managerial positions who are not necessarily academic leaders. They
consequently apply a business management concept to an academic organisation.
The disadvantages of this, as outlined by Harman, include the dif®culties that arise
when people in senior positions, selected primarily because of their management
expertise, are called upon to make judgements about academic direction and
priorities. The institution's values and attitudes may be questioned when senior staff
identify more with management, as opposed to the academic profession. Harman also
notes that staff with a strong academic focus (for example in research and teaching)
are less likely to be attracted now to senior positions due to the management focus
entailed, which means that there is an increasing ``gap'' between senior positions and
academic values, interests and foci. Likewise, there is an increasing gap between
senior managerial staff and their academic colleagues.
Harman maintains that if this trend continues, it is likely that an increasing number
of senior staff with ``less impressive academic records will be heading academic units
 Management and Leadership in the Contemporary University 323

and will be called on to make academic as well as management decisions. This raises
issues about decisions on future academic directions of institutions, and also about
the future of the academic profession'' (Harman, 2002, p. 69). In addition, ``social
relations in faculties and departments seem likely to change, with increased gulfs
developing between deans and heads on the one hand, and their colleagues on the
other'' (Harman, 2002, p. 69.). Anderson et al. (2003), in their research into changes
in academic work roles in Australian universities, also draw attention to the decline of
collegiality which goes with the emergence of corporatisation or bureaucratic control
of universities.
The emphasis and status placed on either managerial or academic leadership
present a genuine dilemma for many modern comprehensive or dual-sector tertiary
institutions, such as the authors' own institution, Unitec Institute of Technology in
Auckland, New Zealand. While Unitec functions essentially as a university, it has its
historical roots ®rmly in the polytechnic sector. Unitec's organisational history is
generally regarded as distinctly managerial, but, with its growth into undergraduate
and postgraduate degrees over the last ten years, there has come an increasing
recognition of the need for overt academic leadership. The challenge to Unitec, and
similar ``modern'' tertiary institutions therefore, is to develop a leadership model
which values both management and academic leadership equally and fosters
situations for academic leaders, managers and administrators to work effectively as
teams. In most institutions this will require conscious behaviour, attitudinal and
organisational change.

Part Three: A leadership model

Given the recent history of tension between management and academic leadership, a
new model for leadership in tertiary education must embrace some fundamental
principles to overcome the inherent dysfunctions this tension tends to generate. The
model proposed is one of role separation and shared leadership, the principles and
requirements of which are set out in Table 2. The most fundamental of these is an
institutional requirement to clearly demonstrate that academic and managerial
leadership are equally valued. This, of course, is easily said, but dif®cult to achieve in
practice. However, without overt mechanisms to effect this principle, institutions will
not change from their current largely dysfunctional leadership practices. Table 2
proposes this and six other principles from which a working model of shared
leadership could be developed. It also identi®es some key operational requirements
that might be effected to give each principle some operational reality.
The principles outlined in Table 2 can best be illustrated by their application to a
speci®c example at Unitec Institute of Technology, which is in the process of a major
structural review. Unitec is a dual sector institution with around 10,000 equivalent
full time students (EFTS) and 30,000 student enrolments in 2003. Approximately
45% of its EFTS are in certi®cate and diploma-level programmes, with the balance of
55% in undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. It is therefore a genuine dual sector
324 J. Yielder and A. Codling

Table 2. Principles and requirements for a model of shared leadership in tertiary education

PRINCIPLES REQUIREMENTS

1. The roles and functions of academic d Parallel career paths for academic leaders
leadership and managerial leadership must and managers
be equally valued by the institution. d Remuneration parity

2. Academic leaders and managers must d Parallel representation on key committees

collaborate and work effectively as a team. and management teams
d Shared accountabilities

3. All academic staff in leadership positions d Acknowledgement in job descriptions

must be actively engaged in teaching and/ d Relevant performance accountability
or research.

4. Administration should be undertaken by d Development of skilled administrators

competent administrators, not academic d Administrator career path
and managerial leaders.

5. Academic leadership positions should be d Junior academic staff supported to achieve

®lled by those who have already achieved academic seniority
academic seniority (e.g. Senior Lecturer, d Appropriate and clearly de®ned promotion
Assoc. Prof. or Prof. or equivalent), not paths and criteria
used as a stepping stone to academic
seniority.

6. Managerial leadership positions should be d Management training provided for aspiring

®lled by those with relevant experience, managers
quali®cations and expertise.

7. Both academic and managerial leaders d Tailored internal staff development

must be committed to currency of programmes
knowledge and expertise relevant to their d Provision for external benchmarking and
positions networking

institution. Its historical roots are as a trade-based technical institute, and later as a
polytechnic. It has been offering degrees for a little less than half of its 27-year history.
At Unitec, the academic programme (which generally equates to a quali®cation
such as a bachelor degree), is the central element of the institution around which
the academic structure has been developed. Currently each programme has a
designated ``programme leader'' who has become responsible for a very wide
range of academic, managerial and administrative activities that support the
programme. It is widely recognised by the institution that academic leadership,
management and administration have become intertwined in this role to the
extent that this critical position is no longer an attractive one for those best able
to perform it. This has meant that staff less quali®ed to ®ll the role with
distinction are being appointed, and little support has been provided for their
 Management and Leadership in the Contemporary University 325

professional development. The role complexity has also meant that individual
staff have developed the position to suit their own attributes and limitations. In
some cases this has resulted in overt management with no academic leadership,
or a focus on administration without either of the former.
A further dysfunction occurs because the traditional management functions of
budgeting, staff performance management and resource management are gener-
ally the domain of a designated manager, generally with the title of Head of
School (or department) or Associate Head of School. Programme leaders, while
carrying a high level of responsibility for the academic quality and credibility of
the programme for which they are responsible, tend to be left out of relevant
decision-making committees comprising these managers. Thus a status hierarchy
is established, and decisions are therefore made on ``managerial'' grounds rather
than on a balanced managerial and academic basis.
Applying the principles of a model of shared academic and managerial leadership at
a departmental/school level to correct these dysfunctions would result in the
following:

1. The focus of a Head of School (department) position as one of strategic direction

and overview (of operation, quality and management), with discipline/programme
speci®c management and academic leadership occurring at the next level of the
organisational hierarchy.
2. The establishment of role clarity between academic leaders and managers,
with complementary status and responsibilities. That is, dual roles of
academic leadership and management would be established for each discip-
line. While this could occur at programme level for large programmes,
establishing dual roles for all programmes would result in a ``top heavy''
school or departmental structure.
3. The clear separation between academic leadership and administration for
programmes, by the appointment of a programme leader who is an established
academic leader, and a programme administrator.
4. The creation of school management committees which would include the Head of
School, academic and managerial leaders, and programme administrators.
5. The establishment of an overt career progression against de®ned standards for
academic and managerial leaders, and administrators.
6. The management of staff performance would be determined by the leadership
team, with formal line management of staff negotiated and distributed between
team members. This is acknowledged to be complex. Staff allocation, appointment
and management lie within a managerial rather than academic role, however the
appointment to and performance of appropriate staff in teaching teams and
courses lies inherently in the domain of academic expertise.

This proposed structure for a shared leadership model by discipline is shown as

Table 3.
326 J. Yielder and A. Codling

Table 3. Proposed structure for a shared leadership model

ACADEMIC LEADER MANAGER

Associate Prof./Prof. preferable. Minimum Masters quali®ed. Attendance of appropriate

Senior Lecturer. Criteria already established management courses for professional
for academic leadership development
Responsibilities Responsibilities
d Teaching and learning d Resource management
d Research ± staff and students d Budget management
d Academic elements of programme d Staff allocation, appointment and
development management
d Staff academic development ie scholarship, d Viability/planning aspects of programme
research, PD opportunities development
d Shared line management of teaching staff
Personal teaching and research Personal teaching and research (if an academic
appointment)
Industry liaison
Advisory, programme and management Committees
Liaison with programme administrators

Conclusions
This article has focussed on leadership and management at the level of the school or
department in a tertiary education institution. Arguably it is in this context that the
confusion between academic leadership and management is most prevalent. The
broader application of this study to other aspects of university leadership, manage-
ment and governance is a matter for future development.
In summary, the article has outlined the need for a shared model of academic and
managerial leadership within tertiary institutions. The model proposed will be re®ned
within the context of Unitec during the restructuring and reorganisation process
currently being undertaken. Central to this is the commitment to quality in both
academic and managerial domains within the institution, and to the equal valuing of
both. There is also a commitment to being open to searching for a new way of
combining the strengths of the modes of leadership emerging from both traditional
and conventional universities and polytechnics and reducing current dysfunctions. A
shared leadership approach provides a challenge and a new focus for the institution. In
the words of Gardner:
To exercise leadership today, leaders must institutionalize their leadership. The issues are
too technical and the pace of change too swift to expect that a leader, no matter how
gifted, will be able to solve personally the major problems facing the system over which he
or she presides. So we design an institutional system ¼ The institutional arrangements
generally include a leadership team ¼ No individual has all the skills ± and certainly not
the time ± to carry out all the complex tasks of contemporary leadership. And the team
must be chosen for excellence in performance. (Gardner, 2000, p. 12)
 Management and Leadership in the Contemporary University 327

This summarises the importance of teamwork, the appropriate aligning of expertise to

leadership roles, and the need for excellence, rather than the mediocrity that comes
from an inappropriate leadership model.
Leadership development is a critical element of organisational growth. Universities
are renown for promoting people who demonstrate excellence in one domain (such as
teaching or research) into jobs which require experience and skills in quite a different
domain (such as people or ®nancial management). While promotion on a basis of
potential may well be valid, it is bad practice if no support or training is provided to
develop the needed skills, and in their absence it has the potential to generate poor
leadership and dysfunction. A shared leadership model doesn't solve this problem,
but it does clarify the distinction between the different types of leadership required in
an institution, and therefore encourages tailored leadership development that is role-
relevant.

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