Abstract
Most research and scholarship in the field of educational leadership and management seems focused on leaders and managers and their perspectives, while the perspective of an entire constituency – ‘the led’ – is generally overlooked and neglected. This article contributes towards redressing this imbalance. Located within the context of the higher education sector, it presents findings from one phase of a funded study whose purpose was to examine what non-professorial academics, researchers and teachers employed in British universities think of the academic leadership provided by their professorial colleagues. From data generated by over 1200 questionnaire responses, a wide range of views emerged on what professors should be doing in order to fulfil their leadership roles, and how effectively they are doing it. A key finding was that, whilst most respondents agreed that professors should be providing academic leadership to junior colleagues – typically, as mentors or advisors – more than half of the sample reported that they were not receiving the help and advice that they wanted or needed.
Keywords
Introduction
It was Malcolm Tight (2002) who, in the UK, seems to have been the first to raise the question of what a professor is, and what s/he does. The role, like the term, is unclearly defined; not only is there diversity on a global level about what is understood by the terms ‘professor’ and ‘professorial’, but even within the UK higher education sector there are differences (between institutions, between disciplines and between individuals) in expectations of what a professor should be and do. As Ann Mroz (2011) wrote in a Times Higher Education leader in 2011: What it means to be a professor – and more importantly what others think it means – is magnificently opaque. There’s plenty of advice on how to get there, but little once you’ve reached your destination. There’s no global job description, no template, no handbook, only the example of those who have gone before. There is no consensus: definitions vary by country, institution and mission, and it is unclear whether professors are there to improve research or teaching.
But the issue is much wider than that of an ill-defined role; it relates to leadership generally and what we know about it, for it is here that a yawning gap is evident. Despite the establishment in the last few decades of educational leadership and management as a recognized field of research and scholarship, the majority of work in this area seems focused on leaders and managers and their perspectives. The perspective of an entire constituency – ‘the led’ – is overlooked and neglected (Evans, 2011a; Pearce and Conger, 2003). The knowledge base therefore comprises a predominantly one-sided perspective – or at least, it is not as balanced as it ought to be. Yet leadership is essentially a relational position: one can only be a leader if there is at least one other person to lead. It is therefore defined not only by those holding leadership roles but also by those on the receiving end of them, but the educational leadership and management (research) community has generally been slow to recognize this, and to widen its focus accordingly.
To contribute towards redressing this imbalance, we have carried out a study of professorial academic leadership as it is perceived by ‘the led’. This article reports one phase of that study; it outlines our research design and presents some of our findings, as they relate to those of our research questions that this one phase has been able to address. First, to set the context, we examine where the field currently lies – in terms of what we know and what issues have been addressed – in relation to professors, their role and their work within UK universities.
It is important to emphasize at the outset, for the benefit of readers based outside the UK, that in all but what is currently a small number of UK universities, the title ‘professor’ is conferred only on a minority of academics – distinguished on the basis of research, and sometimes teaching, excellence – who equate to the North American full professor. Thus the term ‘professor’ refers only to those at the pinnacle of the academic staff hierarchy and is associated with high achievement, peer recognition, seniority and distinction; it is not used generically to refer to all academic staff. Our use of the terms ‘professorial’ and ‘professoriate’ in this article is consistent with their usage in the UK (and in most other European countries), denoting this minority group of senior academics.
The Professor in the UK University
A recent review of the academic role associated with the professoriate in the British university (Rayner et al., 2010) revealed a surprising dearth of literature and research that focused on the professorial leadership role. The same review uncovered an evidently firmly held view that the position of the professor in a British university is one located at the zenith of an academic career, and, moreover, reflects a deeply embedded assumption that incumbents are expected to offer intellectual leadership and models of best practice in scholarship across the full range of subject areas and disciplines in the academy (Boyer, 1990; Tight, 2002; McFarlane, 2011). The UK’s professoriate is therefore generally expected to undertake a range of leadership and professional activities connected with research and teaching, mentoring and helping staff to develop, as well as influencing the work and direction of the university and representing it in interfacing with wider communities. There is an expectation that academic staff who seek career progression will aspire to professorships (Tight, 2002).
Although being a professor does not necessarily involve responsibility in university management (Whitchurch, 2007; Bolden et al., 2008; Kolsaker, 2008) often it does, and some analysts (Pollitt, 1997; Deem, 1998, 2001; Trowler, 2001) argue that this status and formalized role, even when conceived as a form of accumulated ‘career capital’ and useful to one’s curriculum vitae, is fast depreciating in a workplace that increasingly values professional managers rather than professors as managers.
The paucity of educational leadership or management-orientated research into the wider role of a professor or professors as leaders within the institutional context has led Rayner et al. (2010: 619) to identify the ‘mysterious case of the absent professor and the missing professoriate’ in the management of leadership in the UK university. There is, as these authors conclude, a need to know more about the status and working role of a professor in the rapidly changing university workplace. Similarly, Macfarlane (2012: 6, original emphasis) observes that ‘[t]here are rows of books about what it means to be a university or college president and a growing literature about being a head of department…or dean…but very little about the informal leadership offered by the professoriate…’.
A major change to have occurred in UK universities during the last decade has been the gathering apace of a trend of removing a ‘voluntary association basis of authority’ in the role of the academic manager and/or leader (Smith, 2005), and more particularly, leadership roles typically held by professors. This has coincided with a movement towards re-structuring university administration, reflecting a ‘command and control’ approach associated with recent reform in the public sector influenced by ideas of ‘new governance’ (Rhodes, 1996; Smismans, 2006) and/or ‘new’ managerialism (Deem, 2001; Wright, 2001). There is, however, very little published work on how the professorial (leadership) role is affected by these changing structures.
Since about the turn of the last century there has been a noticeable increase in the extent to which research activity and output are perceived as a performance quality indicator in most universities in the UK; research performance has now become quantifiable, with cost implications (Enders et al., 2009). This has given rise to an evident twin-track model of academic leadership that for the most part is carried out by professors: one that on the one hand prioritizes research above other academic activity, while on the other hand it sustains and re-structures governance and management that re-emphasize the separation of academic (that is, intellectual) leadership and/or institutional leadership (that is, professional management and administration). Shaped by government reform, the latter trend reflects a ‘new managerialism’ (Deem, 2001; Hartley, 1997; Lumby and Tomlinson, 2000; Simkins, 2000).
The overall picture is one of shifts and changes that are reminiscent of those identified by Halsey (1995) nearly two decades ago in his survey of UK-based academics. His study prompted loud cries of ‘deprofessionalization’ and even of ‘proletarianization’ – mainly from those who considered themselves most affected. Whether the role of the UK-based professor is changing or evolving in ways that may be interpreted as a similar form of what could be called deprofessionalization is difficult to gauge in the absence of relevant empirical research evidence.
Intended to contribute towards augmenting this under-developed and emaciated knowledge base, our study relates to the UK-based professoriate and – in the interests of representing ‘the led’ – how it is perceived by those who are not members of it.
The Study
Funded by the UK’s Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, our 1-year-long project examined the nature and quality of academic leadership provided by the UK higher education sector’s professoriate. Its purpose was to highlight and disseminate models of good practice, identifying weaknesses and lacunae, and making recommendations for improvements. To meet this purpose we focused the study on addressing the following research questions: What is the nature and extent of professorial academic leadership received by academics, researchers and university teachers – what might/does it look like in practice? To what extent, and in what ways, do academics, researchers and university teachers consider themselves to be receiving the academic leadership that they: (a) want, (b) expect and (c) need from their professorial colleagues? To what extent, and in what ways, do academics, researchers and university teachers think professors should be providing academic leadership to junior colleagues? What do academics, researchers and university teachers perceive as the strengths and weaknesses of any academic leadership that professor(s) provide? What factors do they consider facilitate and impede the nature and extent of professorial academic leadership? What is the emergent picture of professorial academic leadership – what models of good practice and examples of deficiencies are evident? What is the perceived impact of professorial academic leadership on academics’, researchers’ and university teachers’ working lives, professional development, work-related attitudes and achievements? How should professorial academic leadership practice and policy across the UK HE sector be articulated and improved?
These research questions relate to the study in its entirety, and to address them we gathered data using two methods: online questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The study thus comprised two phases: phase one was the questionnaire phase and phase two the interview phase. This article is confined to reporting only phase 1 of the study and its findings.
Phase 1: Method
Questionnaires and one-to-one interviews were employed with the aim of revealing, respectively, a ‘big picture’ and a ‘micro-view’ of evaluations of and attitudes towards professorial academic leadership and the professorial role. Our hopes for uncovering a ‘big picture’ therefore had implications for both the design of the questionnaire and the sample at which it was directed.
The Questionnaire
To secure a sufficiently large response we designed a questionnaire that we expected could be completed within 10 minutes. This was piloted on five colleagues representing three different subjects, and revisions in line with the pilot sample’s responses and recommendations included the rewording of several items and the inclusion of examples that were aimed at providing guidance to respondents. Neither the length nor the format of the questionnaire was identified by the pilot sample as problematic. On the basis of its facility for reaching large numbers of intended respondents with relative ease, and for analysing data as they are received, we decided to use an online questionnaire to be accessed via a link in an email message sent to potential respondents.
Our questionnaire incorporated 40 items (examples of which are presented in parentheses below), arranged in categories relating to: respondents’ biographical information and information on their institutions’ policy and practice in relation to professorial leadership (for example, Does your department operate a formal system of professorial mentoring [i.e, whereby professors have formal responsibility for facilitating and supporting the academic development of non-professorial colleagues]?); perspectives on the professorial role (for example, Should professors be expected to sustain a steady stream of research income?); respondents’ experiences of professors and professorial leadership (for example, How often [in your current post or a previous one] have you experienced professorial leadership or mentoring that you would describe as ‘excellent’ or ‘exemplary’?).
and
A small proportion of items sought factual information (for example, relating to institutional policy and practice or respondents’ biographical details), whilst most required respondents to indicate their opinion by selecting from a set of four- or five-point Likert-scale options (for example, ranging from ‘often’ to ‘never’, or from ‘definitely agree’ to ‘definitely disagree’). There were also open-ended items, providing respondents with the opportunity to add comments on their perceptions of the professorial role and their experiences of professors and professorial leadership.
The Sample
Our greatest challenge was the perennial one facing researchers who use questionnaires: how to secure a good response rate that provided at least a broadly representative sample in terms of including respondents across a wide range of subjects and institutions. Somewhat naively, we had hoped to distribute the questionnaire via our own institutions’ internal staff email distribution lists, as well as via the distribution lists of the several learned societies and professional associations to which we belong, giving us access to around 6000 respondents. In the event, we were granted access only to the learned society lists; our own institutions restricted the use of staff email lists to ‘official’ communication, and although the project and questionnaire were publicized on the University of Leeds portal and on a project website accessed via our own university webpages, these initiatives initially yielded only a small number of responses (estimated at fewer than 100). Publicizing the questionnaire via two learned society (the UK’s Society for Research into Higher Education and the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society) email distribution lists appeared to increase the number of responses to around 300, but, reflecting the societies’ respective memberships, this inevitably yielded a preponderance of respondents from the educational research community, rather than a wider spread across subjects. One month after ‘launching’ the questionnaire our target response total of around 1200 was still far from being met. We therefore adopted a new strategy for augmenting the number of responses: what we refer to as ‘targeted email’.
By ‘targeted email’ we mean requests for participation, sent by email to ‘targeted’ individuals. The content of the message that we sent remained almost unchanged throughout the process and scarcely varied in relation to whom it was sent to. (Occasionally the message would include specific reference to the recipient’s subject, or institution type, pointing out that these were under-represented in the responses received so far.) It began with an apology for the unsolicited contact, introduced briefly the nature of the research project and referred to the funders, and then politely requested participation in the online questionnaire, providing links to both the questionnaire and the project website, where further information on the project could be found.
The ‘targeted’ individuals were selected by consulting staff lists on university department webpages. ‘Targeted’ is perhaps the wrong term to apply, since no individual was targeted personally; rather, specific universities were first selected in a non-systematic manner, on the basis of their representing one or both of: geographical location (for example, a Welsh or a Scottish or a Northern Irish university) or institution type (for example, pre- or post-1992 university, 1 ancient university or specialist institution). Once the university’s website was accessed, one or more of its departments were selected in a similarly non-systematic manner (though as it became evident that specific subjects were under-represented in the responses, departments were then often selected on the basis of potential for redressing the imbalance; for example, a department that housed pharmacists would be selected with a view to augmenting the number of responses from pharmacists). Other practical factors were influential on the selection of a specific department or centre, such as the ease with which individuals’ email addresses could be accessed and copied. Once a department had been selected, all or most of its staff members listed as non-professorial academics, researchers or teachers were each sent the email message, personalized to refer to each recipient by name, in order to encourage her/his participation. The process of sending the messages, once a staff list was selected, thus involved a sequence of three or four copying, cutting and pasting actions per message sent.
Though laborious, this fairly automated process was used to generate around 40–60 personalized email messages per day. Without it, it is unlikely that we would have secured in excess of 400 responses. The process yielded an estimated response rate of around 25–35 per cent, often depending on the targeted subject or discipline, increasing the overall number of responses and allowing us to exercise a degree of control over the balance of subjects and institutions represented. A total of 1223 largely complete responses were received, but among these there was a small proportion (<1 per cent) of missing responses to some questionnaire items.
Based on responses to an optional item asking for contact details (from respondents who indicated their willingness to participate in follow-up interviews), we know that at least 94 institutions are represented in the responses. 66.1 per cent of respondents are based in pre-1992 institutions and 33.5 per cent in post-92 universities (0.3 per cent failed to respond to the item asking respondents to indicate at which type of institution they were employed). Institutions in all four UK nations are represented. 48.3 per cent of respondents are males and 51.3 per cent females (0.7 per cent failed to indicate their gender).
We asked respondents to select which subject they represented from a list of the 67 subject categories used in the 2008 research assessment exercise (RAE). 2 Every one of these subjects is represented in the responses, with the highest number of responses inevitably coming from education, where the research team is well known (see Table 1, which identifies those subjects represented by least 10 respondents). It is worth adding that we deliberately targeted business and management respondents with a view to yielding enough responses to examine whether or not this constituency – one that specializes in management and leadership expertise – was distinct in its pattern of responses: effectively, whether it practises what it preaches.
Respondent distribution by subject for subjects represented by at least 10 respondents.
The most poorly represented subjects were: cardiovascular medicine; Middle Eastern and African studies; philosophy; and psychiatry, neuroscience and clinical psychology. Each of them was represented by only one response. In terms of job role, academics constituted the largest constituency (74.2 per cent of respondents), followed by researchers (14.8 per cent) and then university teachers (3.7 per cent). A further 8.3 per cent either did not respond or selected ‘other’.
Clearly, our sample of respondents cannot be considered nationally representative, in any technical sense, of non-professorial academics. Our findings, presented in the next section, are therefore best interpreted as being indicative of the national picture rather than definitive.
Findings and Discussion
It is important to emphasize that several of our research questions can only be addressed or ‘answered’ by the kind of data generated in phase 2 of the study, through the follow-up interviews. Only four of our research questions are able to be addressed (in any ‘meaningful’ way) by questionnaire-generated data: What is the nature and extent of professorial academic leadership received by academics, researchers and university teachers – what might/does it look like in practice? To what extent, and in what ways, do academics, researchers and university teachers consider themselves to be receiving the academic leadership that they (a) want, (b) expect and (c) need from their professorial colleagues? To what extent, and in what ways, do academics, researchers and university teachers think professors should be providing academic leadership to junior colleagues? What is the emergent picture of professorial academic leadership – what models of good practice and examples of deficiencies are evident?
Below, in four sub-sections, we present the findings in relation to each of these research questions to which our questionnaire data contributes towards answering.
What is the nature and extent of professorial academic leadership received by academics, researchers and university teachers – what might/does it look like in practice?
Academic leadership in the form of mentoring offered to junior colleagues does not appear to feature prominently in UK universities. It is evidently a minority of university departments that operate a formal system of professorial mentoring (that is, whereby professors have formal responsibility for facilitating and supporting the academic development of non-professorial colleagues); only 21.4 per cent per cent of our respondents indicated that this occurred in their departments/centres. Almost 50 per cent (48.5 per cent) indicated that no mentoring system operated, and almost one-third (30.1 per cent) were unsure whether there was a mentoring system, or were unable to answer the question simply. Less than a quarter of respondents reported having a designated professorial mentor. In the additional comments that they volunteered, several respondents indicated having received very helpful mentoring from professors outside their own institutions; the following comments are indicative of these: I actually receive far better support, encouragement, and advice from professorial colleagues OUTSIDE my institution. Many senior colleagues in my department simply pay lip service to the principle of mentoring. I am more likely to seek professorial advice from professors external to my institution than internal professors.
Whilst, overall, there were considerably more negative comments than positive ones, the picture to emerge of academic leadership provided by professors in UK universities is nevertheless very mixed. Our questionnaire generated a range of views expressed as comments such as: I would prefer it if the mentoring role was more clearly defined. Currently I do not feel confident seeking advice as I know that the professors are all very busy. I find the departmental professor to be approachable and helpful. I have had some very mixed experiences. Whereas some professorial staff have been extremely supportive and have been interested in my research fields and have tried to help me develop my research and teaching, I have had some experiences where professors have very negatively affected my career. No very good advice or knowledge forthcoming. Professor obsessed with own career.
Respondents from some post-1992 universities indicated that professorships in their institutions were often conferred for administrative responsibility rather than for research excellence and distinction. Such leadership was perceived as managerial and administrative in focus, but was more clearly defined than the rather nebulous ‘academic’ leadership that was associated with professorships in research-intensive universities. It is also evident that attitudes towards the nature of professorial leadership vary between these two types of institutions; there was stronger agreement in pre-1992 institutions than in post-1992 institutions with the statement that ‘professors should have an outstanding international reputation for research or scholarship in their field’.
To what extent, and in what ways, do academics, researchers and university teachers consider themselves to be receiving the academic leadership that they (a) want, (b) expect and (c) need from their professorial colleagues?
Data relating to this question present a picture of professorial academic leadership that is far from ideal. The responses to the following two questions are detailed in Table 2: How often (in your current post or a previous one) have you experienced professorial leadership or mentoring that you would describe as ‘excellent’ or ‘exemplary’? How often (in your current post or a previous one) have you experienced professorial leadership or mentoring that you would describe as ‘unsatisfactory’?
Summary of responses (expressed as percentages) to the questions: ‘How often (in your current post or a previous one) have you experienced professorial leadership or mentoring that you would describe as: (a) “excellent” or “exemplary”; (b) “unsatisfactory”’?
Asked more specifically about the extent and nature of help they receive from professors – ‘Do you feel that you receive as much help and advice as you want or need from one or more of your professorial colleagues?’ – over half of the respondents (52.3 per cent) selected negative responses: (13.5 per cent of respondents selected ‘definitely’, 25.7 per cent selected ‘probably’, 29.6 per cent selected ‘not really’, 22.7 per cent selected ‘no’, and 8.5 per cent were unsure or found the question difficult to answer or did not respond).
While there was little evidence of different patterns of responses to these questions in relation to respondents’ gender, differences were evident between pre- and post-1992 institutions, with pre-1992 institutions being more likely to have experienced on the one hand ‘exemplary’ and on the other hand ‘unsatisfactory’ leadership. This indicates more reported variation in leadership experiences in pre-1992 institutions than in post-1992 institutions.
To what extent, and in what ways, do academics, researchers and university teachers think professors should be providing academic leadership to junior colleagues?
Expectations of professors are evidently high: 63.7 per cent of respondents ‘definitely agree’ that it should be a requirement of the professorial role to ‘have a responsibility to advise non-professorial colleagues and help them develop professionally’, and 30.0 per cent ‘agree to some extent’. There was little evidence of significant variation in these responses across the three role designations: academics, researchers and teachers.
More specificity was provided by respondents’ comments. The following are indicative of the range of views expressed: [A professor should be] a person who can mentor and guide non professorial colleagues; a scientist who can be respected for their [sic] integrity. A professor has to be able to build and manage a research group. A professor should be well established in his/her field but willing and able to pass on knowledge and experience to colleagues so the whole department can grow and succeed. A professor should not be absent from the department for long periods and should be a team player rather than a ‘personal glory seeker’. A professor should exemplify the pinnacle of what we academics aspire to (in research and teaching) and be able to inspire and encourage others into the field. [A professor should] ensure the vibrancy of the research culture of the department. I expect them [professors] to be interested in the work of other academics working in areas closely related to their own – to be not only ploughing their own furrow – but to see it as important to support other academics, perhaps by co-authoring, drawing them in to research projects and so on. I see professors as being role models (hopefully positive ones) from whom less experienced/aspiring colleagues can learn about their craft, discipline, and potential academic futures.
Such responses and evident expectations are likely to reflect a combination of factors. First, among early career academics and researchers – those to have benefited from the increased focus within UK universities on personal and professional development that is marked by the post-Roberts agenda that followed hard on the heels of the Roberts Report, Set for Success, (Roberts, 2002) – the expectation that other (often senior) colleagues should be at hand to help them build a successful career right from the doctoral stage is unsurprising. This shift in both expectations and practice over the years is discussed in Raddon’s (2011) comparative analysis of how different generations of researchers and academics learned about research and how to be researchers. Second, more senior, or ‘veteran’ members of staff are likely to be influenced by the unmistakable prominence afforded to ‘academic leadership’ by university senior managers – such that the term has now become firmly embedded within the vernacular of HE management-speak, even if it remains unclearly defined. It is rare to find advertisements and job descriptions relating to professorial posts that do not identify academic leadership as a key aspect of the role. Indeed, the most senior of our respondents – readers, principal lecturers and principal research fellows – are likely to have had such demands or requirements placed on them. That they should, in turn, pass on this expectation upwards is also unremarkable. The discourse and the rhetoric of the day in relation to what professors do and should do, are firmly tied up with this elusive term – ‘academic leadership’ – which is often equated with the kind of leadership that involves mentoring and advising others, as well as demonstrating what it means to be a leading academic.
What is the emergent picture of professorial academic leadership – what models of good practice and examples of deficiencies are evident?
Whilst it is our interview-generated data, gathered in phase 2 of the study, that have provided the main source of answers to this question, some questionnaire data – in particular, the additional comments that many respondents felt compelled to offer – also contribute towards addressing it. From the perspective of ‘the led’, the overall emergent picture of professorial academic leadership is one that is diverse and multifaceted. Reports of professorial leadership that was considered good or even outstanding represent the minority of comments, appearing alongside complaints and gibes – sometimes within the same comment, indicating that many respondents had had very varied experiences. The following comments are indicative: In my experience very few professors provide good leadership and on the whole they do not manage well. They do not teach enough. Many of our professors were ‘bought’ in for the last RAE and have done nothing to contribute to an improved research culture. Some think teaching is beneath them. To be honest I’m not all that sure what they [professors] actually do here! Some [professors] are truly inspirational and motivational; some just stay home and get on with being famous. The most outstanding professors with which I’ve worked (regrettably the minority) are those that lead by example through engagement with the discipline. More importantly, though, has been their commitment/desire to engage with staff: supporting, inspiring, mentoring and developing them. With many others a professorship seems to have had the opposite effect, leading to non-engagement and protectionism of their own research interest/external recognition. Some of our professors are preoccupied with their own image outside the institute and are not really interested what the ‘little’ people in the institution need, whether it be in terms of career or personal issues. Even when they listen to you they give the impression of being concerned but when you don’t get the result you know that it was just a pretence on their part.
These – and the majority of the comments entered into the questionnaire – highlight two related issues about perceptions of professorial academic leadership. First, it is, understandably, most frequently evaluated egocentrically; that is, on the basis of how it impacts or has impacted on the respondent her/himself. This may be considered to represent self-centred or self-focused evaluation, yet whilst reflecting human nature, it reveals the importance of the relational aspect of leadership that underpins our concern to examine and present the perspectives of ‘the led’. Second, evaluation of professorial academic leadership is evidently determined by the extent to which expectations of good professorial practice are met. Models of good practice were therefore represented as those where the professor is perceived as providing something of what is expected of her/him: typically, useful and helpful advice and mentoring; availability; approachability; time for others; and a willingness to take on a variety of tasks (teaching as well as research, along with academic citizenship, such as committee chairing) and to do these tasks well. Models of ineffective or unsatisfactory practice incorporated behaviour that was perceived as manifesting self-centredness, a self-aggrandisement-directed focus, self-absorption and incompetence or inadequacy. Typically, professors placed in this category were perceived as being unwilling to find time for colleagues; as avoiding those aspects of the job that risk impeding the professor’s attainment of his or her career-related goals or profile-building, and which, as a result, often fall upon the shoulders of junior colleagues.
Implications for Universities
It would be easy to translate these findings into recommendations for responsive university policy and practice that address what appear to be a combination of complaints and cries for help articulated by representatives of their largest combined constituency of staff. Such recommendations might include: universities should carry out more 360-degree appraisals and other feedback systems than they currently do – and they should take note and act upon the data that these generate, rather than merely pay lip service to the exercises; universities should introduce formal professorial mentoring systems (that is, where professors mentor and advise junior colleagues) rather than rely on informal, ad hoc and consequently uneven and patchy mentoring provision; and, universities should monitor professors’ practice and performance in relation to academic leadership activities more carefully than has hitherto typically occurred – and they should take remedial action to deal with professors who ‘underperform’ in this respect. Yet we emphasize that these are not our recommendations, because – popular as they may be with the disgruntled complainants who expressed themselves through our questionnaire – they nevertheless belie the complexity of the issue; academic leadership is not a simple and straightforward concept – it remains unclearly or inexplicitly defined, and our study in its entirety showed it to be subject to multiple interpretations. As a result, its practice cannot easily or unambiguously be, first, delineated or, second, monitored.
Yet herein lies a task that universities could usefully take on: the task of reducing uncertainty and ambiguity by clarifying how they understand academic leadership and what it looks like in practice (that is, what behaviours might typically be considered to represent its practice), and communicating this conception or vision explicitly to all staff – those expected to manifest academic leadership and those expected to benefit from it. In this respect, universities could potentially take a lesson from the compulsory education sector, where the notion and principles of distributed leadership are firmly embedded within the culture and practice of leading and managing schools and colleges. What was particularly striking about our findings was the large number of questionnaire respondents who commented that it was not necessarily or not only professors from whom they sought or received mentoring; senior lecturers and even fellow junior colleagues were acknowledged as valuable sources of helpful guidance, advice and support.
Some universities do indeed seem to be taking steps to ‘legitimize’ such ‘unofficial’ or ‘implicit’ distributed leadership by incorporating it – or, at least, opportunities for it – into their organizational structures. The adoption of a system of new academic titles, by a small – though undoubtedly growing – number of UK Russell Group universities (for example, the universities of Warwick, Nottingham and, most recently, Leeds), whereby the American academic professional classification system of assistant, associate and full professorial status replaces the traditional UK one of lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and professor, ostensibly has as its rationale, at least in part – certainly in the case of the University of Leeds – the notion that it is not only the title of professor that will be distributed more widely among academic staff, but also professorial academic leadership, however that may be defined. The global homogenization within academia that such new practices represent may be welcomed, or it may be resented as unnecessary Americanization that risks diluting the distinctiveness of British (or, more widely, European) higher education. Yet the principles upon which these new practices evidently are partly founded – those of democratization of authority, power and status, and its capacity to motivate – must surely be welcomed as a step forward in developing educational leadership and management in the university sector.
Conclusion
The picture of professorial academic leadership, then, as perceived by our questionnaire sample of ‘the led’, is far from rosy. Yet it is important to re-emphasize the methodological limitations of this phase of our study; a key point that we make above is that the questionnaire sample is not a representative sample, and consideration of the predominantly negative perceptions that emerged of professors, and the nature, extent and quality of their academic leadership, must incorporate recognition of this limitation. The questionnaire data cannot be considered to represent general consensual views across academia; to err on the side of caution, they may be interpreted as potentially including the views of an atypical disgruntled constituency within the UK higher education sector, and which may have used our questionnaire – in particular, the facility for offering supplementary comments – as a cathartic means of airing complaints, unleashing vituperative responses to perceived injustices and unfair treatment, and articulating grievances. Indeed, in late 2011 a report in the Times Higher Education of our study’s preliminary findings (Grove, 2011) prompted a similar outpouring of emotion in the Comments section relating to it, and the magazine reported over 10,000 hits on the online version, placing the piece very high up in its list of ‘successful’ reports that year (where ‘success’ appears to equate to impact on the readership that prompts a reaction). Among some academics, at least, our findings evidently ring true.
On the other hand, irrespective of whether they do in fact represent the tainted perceptions of an atypically aggrieved minority, our findings have undoubtedly uncovered some degree of discontentment with professors and how they carry out their roles. This discontent inevitably represents unmet expectations: the nature of the professionalism practised by professors – ‘enacted’ professionalism (Evans, 2011b) – does not entirely correlate with the nature of ‘demanded’ or ‘requested’ professionalism (Evans, 2011b): that which one constituency – in this case, ‘the led’ (but in many cases the ‘requesting’ or ‘demanding’ constituency could be employers or senior managers) – demands or expects of a workforce or professional group that represents another constituency. Perhaps these expectations are unreasonable. Many – if not most – professors will have been appointed or promoted to their roles on the basis of intellectual achievement, so any leadership that they may reasonably be expected to provide is intellectual or academic in nature.
But leadership is multi-dimensional, incorporating dimensions such as: intellectual, emotional, social and moral (Wepner et al., 2008), each of which is likely to underpin what have come to be recognized as different ‘types’ or ‘styles’ of leadership (Rayner, 2008); charismatic leadership, for example, may be expected to incorporate a strong social dimension. Are academics, researchers and university teachers – the ‘led’, in relation to professorial leadership – expecting too much of their professors? Are they expecting them to manifest the social skills and emotional intelligence that characterize charismatic leaders, when, in fact, their – professors’ – core skill is their intellectual capacity, rather than their capacity for engaging with others and winning friends?
From a leadership and management perspective, however, the key issue is not the ‘accuracy’ of the perceptions, and of consequent expectations, of ‘the led’, but the implications of these (mis)perceptions and expectations on their morale, motivation and satisfaction with their work situations (Evans, 1998; Pearce and Conger, 2003). Whether they are justified or not, negative perceptions of leaders and managers constitute a problem for leaders and managers.
Yet it appears that the role of the professor in leading scholarship and other, related, academic work suffers from ‘an attention deficit’ in terms of both educational theory and practice; as Macfarlane (2012: 3) notes: ‘There are lots of books and articles about intellectuals and many others that focus on the meaning of leadership. However, to my knowledge, there are very few that have tried to understand how these terms may be conjoined in a meaningful way’. Moreover, our phase 1 (questionnaire) findings reveal a picture of perceived professorial leadership that varies widely in nature and quality, but that incorporates many shortcomings – in which respect it is no different from leadership of any nature, at any hierarchical level, and in any context. Much of this professorial work in the past might have been classified as voluntary ‘academic citizenship’ (Macfarlane, 2007), including contributions to the development of colleagues through mentoring or advising. Our findings suggest that not only such mentoring, but also much more, is now expected of professors in what is a fast changing environment.
Recent research relating to the professoriate has sought data from the higher echelons of the academic institutional and disciplinary hierarchy: either predominantly from professors, or having focused upon those involved in managing the university (Bolden et al., 2008; Macfarlane, 2011, 2012). Our research, in contrast, has uncovered the ‘other side of the coin’, eliciting the testimonies and perspectives of what might be perceived as a hitherto silent majority in a university context: those workforce constituencies with which a professor works, and which s/he is expected to lead and/or manage. Our questionnaire has given these constituencies a voice; it is now up to those in the UK higher education sector who are responsible for developing policy and practice relating to professorial academic leadership to give careful consideration to what this voice is saying, and to decide how best to respond.
Footnotes
Funding
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, which funded this study.