This study, conducted as part of an unfunded research project, presents the findings of an empirical investigation aimed at developing a comprehensive framework of key competencies for heads of academic departments. The framework is designed to support both the preparation of academics for leadership roles and the ongoing development and…

This study explores an understudied yet critically important role in higher education: the academic department chair. Building on research related to the gendered organization of faculty life and using a national sample of department leaders per the COACHE "Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey" (n = 1,173), we use descriptive discriminant…

Distributed leadership has become one of the most popular and important leadership models in the West, particularly in the field of education. However, both theoretical and empirical research into distributed leadership in the Chinese Higher Education context is rare. This dearth of literature on the subject has motivated the authors to carry out…

Given the entrenched movement toward internal and external accreditation in Middle Eastern universities, it is important to gain insights into departments heads' performance, which contributes to the quality of the university's work and its reputation. Results from related research can be used in the development of leadership performance criteria.…

University teachers funded to engage in educational development projects have been found to become increasingly engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning. However, research also points to obstacles such as departmental culture, lack of support from management, and unhelpful administrative processes. In this study, I interview university…

The Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) created a Small Teaching Challenge, leveraging department chairpersons to encourage faculty adoption of evidence-based, small teaching practices. Inspired by James Lang's "Small Teaching" (2016) and previous collaborations with department…

The Netflix series, "The Chair," illustrates a dramatic portrayal of the role of the chair. The reality of the department chair's role is complex and becoming more so. The inherent structure of the department chair is rife with paradoxes. Following a brief overview of the leadership literature and a quick summary of "The Chair"…

Adjunct faculty at colleges and universities in the U.S. are quickly outnumbering full-time faculty. This new faculty majority often struggles with low pay and sub-par working conditions. Recognizing this issue has a number of negative impacts for higher education, researchers at a comprehensive university in the southeastern United States…

Recently, a number of inbreeding cases have surfaced that have fuelled public criticism of recruitment practices and the lack of mobility in the Swedish higher education sector. This study focuses on recruitment practices at Swedish universities, particularly the divergence between what seems to be a practice of hiring internal candidates and a…

Sub-degree education is one of the key higher education sectors in Hong Kong. With the effect of managerialism, tertiary institutions tend to transition from a collegial toward a managerial model, and have shifted from teaching-intensive institutions to research-intensive ones. In this study, two key research questions are addressed: to what…

Literacy abilities are crucial for economic progress and community welfare, with higher education recognizing them as vital for problem-solving, critical thinking, continuous learning, and effective functioning for both experienced educators and the new student cohorts. The study examined the interplay between organizational learning and…

Purpose: Leadership has been recognised as a critical factor for employees' job satisfaction. However, much remains to be learned about how university academics who work in developing country contexts perceive their head of departments (HoDs) and deans' leadership styles and how such leadership styles influence their job satisfaction. Therefore,…

Despite the abundance of research linking leadership behaviours to organisational effectiveness in various sectors, there is a lack of empirical studies that investigate how leadership behaviours influence performance in the context of research universities. The present study examined the effects of leadership behaviours on departmental…

This study examined the experiences of faculty members who transitioned into the role of department chair at community colleges in the United States. While there is research on faculty transitioning into department chair roles at four-year colleges and universities, there is very little research on this transition within community college…

To accelerate scientific progress by advancing the spread of open access and free and open source software and hardware in academia, this study surveyed university professors in Canada to determine their willingness accept "open source (OS) endowed chair professorships." To obtain such an "open source endowed chair," in…