Developing and sustaining shared leadership in higher education

Abstract

I am delighted to be invited to write the foreword to this stimulus paper, which is the result of collaboration between the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, and LH Martin Institute at the University of Melbourne. For a decade or more, theories of distributed and shared leadership have emerged as alternatives to those of the industrial model where leadership is centralised in the few. The difference is seeing leadership as a process (or more explicitly as a set of functions or activities) that are carried out by the group rather than defining leadership as a set of individual qualities or traits. This paper explores what individuals and institutions can do to help develop and sustain more inclusive and shared leadership cultures and practices in their institutions. It is structured around three themes - context, practice and engagement - and begins by uncovering the confusion between academic leadership and the management of academic practice. It highlights how increasing competition, marketisation and the global financial crisis have served to run the potential risk of driving academic leadership underground.