There is a prevailing trend of distributed leadership in the West as it balances the weaknesses and combines the capabilities of different individuals in knowledge-based societies. Conversely, there is still a lack of understanding and literature on distributed leadership in Chinese universities. We know little about how faculty members in Chinese…

This article examines the power dynamics underpinning performance management at a selected South African university. It specifically employs Michel Foucault's (1977) ideas on Governmentality to interpret the envisioning of performance management in this context at the level of Policy. The study employed a qualitative research methodology to…

As Canadian post-secondary institutions emerge from the pandemic restrictions, they are in a historically unique position to assess how online education has both facilitated and hindered learning, and how the effects might be greater for some. In this study, open-ended comments from the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association 2022 Spring…

Using an analytical-interpretative autoethnographic account of my move from a professional staff manager to an academic manager in a university, I highlight how career transitions can result in othering due to the academic' professional divide, the strength of academic identity in disciplines and the continued role of women being in positions of…

The present article is dedicated to the hyper-hierarchization of small-scale organizational spaces (and the most immediate ones for most academics)--university departments. By using the anarchist critique of hierarchies to deconstruct the architecture of an undisclosed department located at one of the South African universities, the author…

Purpose: The present study aimed to find out the relationship of public service motivation (PSM) with other positive aspects, that is workplace spirituality and employee well-being among academic staff of public sector higher education institutions. Design/methodology/approach: In order to capture the full picture of the institutional factors that…

Higher Education has witnessed an increase in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities on college campuses. Despite this slow growth, many colleges and university climates remain largely unwelcoming to LGBTQ students, faculty, and staff. Student activism has largely been responsible for this growth, supported…

Universities have become toxic sites characterised by anxiety, depression and humiliation. Following new managerialism, leadership and management in universities have been driven by the mandate of achieving efficiency, which has led to the implementation of stringent performance management systems, increasing accountability and authoritarianism.…

Racism and inequity remain widespread in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), hindering ethnic minority (EM) postgraduate researchers' (PGRs) prospects. A deeper understanding of the experience of EM PGRs and the obstacles they face is needed. This study endeavoured to explore the plurality of EM PGRs' experiences and generate PGR-led…

A considerable body of studies on neoliberalism in higher education has conducted macro-level philosophical analyses regarding the effects of assessment regimes on university management. This article expands the literature by providing an important set of empirical findings pertaining to Hong Kong universities' coping strategies in preparing their…

Higher education has existed in Australia for 170 years, yet Indigenous Australians have participated for only half a century. One key change the Australian higher education sector has witnessed over the last decade is the steady increase of people occupying senior Indigenous leadership roles. These positions are indeed relatively new and have not…

The aim of this paper is to contribute to a long-standing critical tradition in the educational leadership literature through an analytical examination of the idiosyncrasies of leadership in Higher Education institutions (based on the UK example). It applies a postmodern way of thinking to the educational leadership phenomenon to problematise and…

Sexual violence is a serious problem demanding attention in higher education. Neoliberalism, which is ubiquitous in higher education, may appear as an effective guiding philosophy for institutional leaders but falls short when it comes to preventing and responding to sexual violence. Using Michigan State University (MSU) as a case, we, graduates…

This paper investigates the power landscapes within Chinese universities, against the larger backdrop of China's attempt to build modern university governance systems for developing world-class universities. Drawing upon Fairclough's three-dimensional conceptions of discourse and informed by Pierre Bourdieu's key conceptual notions of field and…

This paper aims to analyse the shift in the internal power balance between managerial and academic self-governance as reflected in the perceptions of teaching and non-teaching staff on the tendencies, decision-making processes and actor's roles in these processes. The empirical data used in this paper were gathered on the basis of an on-line…