The university academic manager (AM) or head of school/department is typically positioned in a hierarchical world: as a middle manager 'sandwiched' between senior management and subordinates. I propose a different framing: the AM cohabits two worlds, the worlds of hierarchy and collegiality respectively. Using an ideal type framework and data…

University campuses serve as second homes for students, teachers, administrators, and parents coming from diverse regions, religions, classes, castes, and different genders. Interaction and camaraderie between the major characters in the academe develop. The bonhomie that exists between the stakeholders of the academe has its own rules, rules that…

The paper is informed by a research study exploring middle leadership as experienced by Chairpersons of Departments within one faculty in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is argued that middle leadership in higher education needs to be understood as a highly complex relational endeavour, characterised by compromises that are negotiated…

The California Community College (CCC) system is the largest system of higher education in the United States, with 72 districts and 113 colleges. The CCC system exhibits statistics demonstrating success; however, as with any organization, trust, communication, and leadership play an essential role in creating stable and productive organizations.…

Bullying and mobbing are migrating to online realms, intensifying the damage involved and increasing the complexities of these issues. Social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) are intensely communal in many senses; they may serve to increase the negative aspects of bullying and mobbing as well as provide community-oriented tools for mitigation.…

The purpose of this study was to explore and understand relational workplace aggression among female faculty and administrators at three western U.S. universities. This study was designed to address the gap in empirical knowledge of the phenomenon by elucidating how workplace relational aggression affects the lives of female university faculty and…

The IT department has become so enmeshed in the interests and activities of the entire institution that, these days, IT requires a good deal more than an overseer. While the executive charged with leading IT is often called the chief information officer, chief information leader would now be a much better title. And that's because leaders can…

University administrators must realize that past management styles they used to acquire their positions of campus power often become the future incarnations of their failure as administrators. The conundrum of power is that the less power a leader grants to people, the less powerful the leader becomes in the eyes of the people. Individuals have a…

Advocates of corporate governance reform hailed passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 as a long-overdue raising of the accountability bar for corporate directors. Although SOX, as the law is widely known, does not legally apply to nonprofit boards, it has profoundly influenced the way many trustees, especially current and former corporate…

Suggestions are made for creating healthy working relationships within a college administration and for improving the administrator's ability to cope with college politics. After introductory material examining the difficulty some educators, especially women, experience in utilizing power and politics to achieve desired goals, the report discusses…

One of the problems in the governance of academic institutions is described as the presence of a complex network of committees with a set of powerful individuals. Powerful individuals emerge because of personal qualities and because some decision-making modes must be established for decisions that cannot wait for committees. (Author/MLW)

Clout, or the authority invoked in certain situations, is discussed as it pertains to public relations officers. Five ways to cultivate the president are presented and some effective power plays are described. (MLW)