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The Future of Leadership in Public Universities: Is Shared Leadership the Answer?
Author(s) -
Pearce Craig L.,
Wood Bob G.,
Wassenaar Christina L.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/puar.12938
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , servant leadership , leadership style , corporate governance , shared leadership , politics , shared governance , public relations , political science , leadership studies , public administration , leverage (statistics) , state (computer science) , leadership , strategic leadership , educational leadership , sociology , management , law , economics , algorithm , machine learning , computer science
Leadership of public universities has come under fire—from scandals, from funding, from students, from every direction. Top‐down leadership of institutions of higher education has been described as a “disease.” Shared governance—a mechanism of faculty representation in the leadership and decision‐making processes—a seeming alternative, has been described as “a recipe for paralysis.” In this article, the authors proffer shared leadership as a potential elixir for leading public institutions of higher learning, unleashing creative potential, focusing on pressing strategic imperatives, and enabling sustainable systems that leverage true talent to maximum effect. It is time to move beyond the moribund myth of top‐down heroic leadership and beyond the bureaucratic, political quagmire of the current state of affairs in shared governance. Is shared leadership the answer?