The Ambiguities and Possibilities of Leadership in Higher Education 37
of different styles or frames of leadership also waits be achieved, as does the
articulation of a method of strategic leadership that touches the deeper currents
of organizational narratives and values. In sum, the agenda for understanding
leadership needs to be enlarged, and the methods for practicing it more robust.
To achieve these goals we have to find new intellectual bearings. Some of
those new ways of thinking have come to light in our review of the concept of
relational leadership in contemporary scholarship, and we will put these findings
to good use. As we do so, we shall examine what we take to be the deeper roots of
the perennial challenges of shared governance in higher education. Much of the
problem of leadership in academic institutions resides in the need to reconceptu-
alize and to reconfigure collegial authority and decision making. In tracing these
new conceptual elements, we shall also be setting in place the framework for an
integral approach to strategy as a process and discipline of leadership.
NOTE
- For a good bibliography on the tasks of academic management and leadership in var-
ious positions, see the American Council on Education’s workshop notebook on “Chairing
the Academic Department” (Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 2004),
which is periodically reissued.