The Ambiguities and Possibilities of Leadership in Higher Education 23
making, gender and multiculturalism, and strategic change. As descriptive analyses,
however, the primary aim of these publications is to provide research and findings
that have implications for leadership, rather than to propose a systematic method
for practicing it.
LEADERSHIP AS AUTHORITY: THE CASE
OF THE COLLEGE PRESIDENCY
The central issue of authority in collegiate leadership takes us logically to
a consideration of the college presidency, which has been the focus of the most
concentrated, systematic, and influential scholarship on leadership over the past
several decades. Books and studies related to the presidency continue to appear,
so the topic remains a focus of investigation (Association of Governing Boards of
Universities and Colleges 1996, 2006; Bornstein 2003; D. G. Brown 2006; Fisher
and Koch 2004; Keohane 2006; Padilla 2005; Shaw 2006).
We are drawn to this literature for several reasons. In the first place, it offers
a test case to scrutinize the theories and the language of leadership in higher
education, and in the second, it provides recommendations for the practice of
leadership. Most importantly, presidential leadership is the mirror image of the
campus system and culture of authority and decision making. It reflects the quite
particular ways in which academic organizations carry out their purposes through
the work of decentralized and autonomous groups of knowledge professionals. If
strategic leadership is to flourish in the values and practices of the academy, it
must first understand how academic governance works.
The Weakness of the Presidency
The most influential analyses of the college presidency conclude that it is
structurally weak in authority, beyond whatever strengths and talents a given
individual may bring to it. In the words of the Association of Governing Boards
of Universities and Colleges’ influential 1996 Commission on the State of the
Presidency, “University presidents operate from one of the most anemic power
bases in any of the major institutions in American society” (9). In language that
is even more pointed, Cohen and March claim in their classic study of the presi-
dency: “The presidency is an illusion. Important aspects of the role seem to disap-
pear on close examination.... The president has modest control over the events
of college life” (1986, 2). These arguments and the research that supports them
may be challenged, but they have set the terms for debate on the presidency for
several decades.
Loosely Coupled Systems
It is worth examining a series of structural characteristics of academic and
organizational governance, from shared authority to what Cohen and March