and universities while respecting the commitment to collegial decision making.
It focuses on the importance of a strategic planning council or its equivalent to
coordinate the strategy process and suggests practical ways to orient the council’s
work, including the use of a set of strategic indicators.
Part III, Practicing Strategic Leadership, focuses each chapter on the compo-
nents of an effective strategy process and suggests methods to orient them to lead-
ership. Chapter 6 is the book’s center of gravity, since it roots strategic leadership
conceptually and practically in narratives of identity. It discusses and illustrates
the power of narrative in organizational experience and analyzes the central place
of stories of identity in leadership. In the following chapter the essential content
of strategy is considered in terms of institutional identity, mission, and vision. In
this context, the connection between strategy and leadership becomes explicit
and inescapable, given the commanding importance of mission and vision for both
practices. The next four chapters describe how each of the major components of
strategic planning is reformulated as they are developed in the context of the
process and discipline of strategic leadership. Chapter 9 suggests the importance
of interpreting institutional identity in strategic terms as a repertoire of capabili-
ties, explores the usefulness of the idea of core competencies, and examines the
possibilities of environmental scans, SWOT analyses, and scenarios for exploring
and responding to change in the wider world. The tenth chapter examines how
strategic leadership provides a helpful orientation to the different levels of strat-
egy as it moves from strategic initiatives and imperatives to measurable goals and
actions. The following chapter provides a series of illustrations of the implications
of strategic leadership for decision making in different spheres of organizational
life, from student learning to finances. Chapter 12 describes the important transi-
tion from leadership to management and suggests ways to embed the process of
strategic leadership in the operations of an academic institution.
Part IV, The Limits and Possibilities of Strategic Leadership, consists of two
chapters, the first of which focuses on the central problems of the leadership of
change and conflict, issues that have been both explicit and implicit through-
out the study. The chapter shows the capacities of strategic leadership to deal
effectively with change and structural conflict, as well as its limits concerning
adversarial conflict and crisis management. The conclusion offers a recapitula-
tion of each of the major elements of the discipline and the process of strategic
leadership and explores other central issues, including the strategic integration of
various dimensions and forms of leadership.
SOURCES OF THE STUDY
In developing the many-sided arguments of the work, I have explored literature
and research in several overlapping areas. These include studies on leadership in
general, and on leadership and governance in higher education in particular. It
goes without saying that there is now a vast popular and scholarly body of litera-
ture on leadership, with some interesting points of convergence in the best of the
xvi Preface