Leading Academics or Academic Leaders? The Changing Role of Middle Line Managers in European Universities (study case University of Seville).
Author(s):
Inmaculada Martinez-Garcia (presenting / submitting) M. Teresa Padilla-Carmona
Conference:
ECER 2014
Network:
26. Educational Leadership
Format:
Paper (Copy for Joint Session)

Session Information

26 SES 07 C JS, Policy, Management and Governance in Higher Education

Paper Session, Joint Session NW22 and NW 26

Time:
2014-09-03
17:15-18:45
Room:
B021 Anfiteatro
Chair:
Sue Robson

Contribution

In the last few years, there have been many changes in all the European Union nations, that, as well as the protocols of the Bologna Declaration, impact both on the University as an organizational system, and all the organizational and management processes in the higher education sector (Linas-Audet, Girotto, and Solé, 2011). This process of change involves a great concern for improving the quality of service provision across the university such as teaching, assessment, research, management systems (Llinàs-Audet et al., 2011). The main idea of the new education policy is to adapt the higher education sector to meet the demands and needs of the emerging global knowledge economy and the increasingly international market for higher education.

In relation to this issue, some authors consider that one of the weaknesses in the functioning of academic departments relates to their inability to address problems with the quality of educations offered by them at University (Zabalza, 2000) and draw attention to the lack of leadership, experience, resources and a shared aims within subject departments.

In order to understand how the higher education sector operates, this research utilises the concept of organization developed by Weinert (1985). Hence, the higher education system is characterised by a group of people operating within institutional boundaries, and limits imposed by a hierarchical authoritarian system, that is based on an unchanging environmental context and with common aims. To analyse the University as a dynamic system it is necessary to use the organisational theories of Weick (1996), Ball (1989), and Mintzberg (2005), which enables the identification of particular institutional attributes that must be considered when studying the University as an educational system: weakly articulated structure, professional bureaucracy and power and micropolitic, (political arena (Lopez and Rando, 2002).

Hence, when considering academic leadership, we must consider the importance of these system attributes within the University, while the organization is characterized by having a loosely coupled structure, without high levels of moral commitment and without certainty concerning the importance of what is done (Schein, 1994). The analysis is developed further by utilizing the concept of the effective leader, as laid down by Hogg and Vaughan (2010), who refer to an effective leader as one who has succeeded in setting new goals and influenced others to achieve, and this is the primary goal to which any department at the University should aspire. Some authors establish that those leaders with "democratic attitudes, charismatic, informal and persuasive have been identified as the most suitable for the development group, both as a human production" (Infante, 2008:101). Moreover, there are some recent international research studies that examine the analogy between leadership, departmental effectiveness and educational innovation in higher education (Breakwell and Tytherleigh’s, 2010; Kezar and Lesler, 2009; Stephenson, 2011). Such managers could play an important role as pedagogical leaders and become relevant for change by driving the departmental aims in accordance with the new and changing demands of the knowledge economy.

This research comprises a study of middle managers in higher education through the analysis of the role of heads of departments. The main question is, what is the perception of the middle-lined managers in Universities about their position, the tasks they develop, their feelings and needs?

The objectives are as follows:

  1. Analyze the aspects that characterize intermediate management positions at the University in order to identify profiles.
  2. Inquire about actual performance of heads of department and identify potential management styles associated with motivational profiles.
  3. Examine the perceptions and opinions about their post.
  4. Investigate their perception of the need for training for the post taking into account their difficulties in their everyday practice.

Method

This qualitative study aims to provide in-depth research into the perspective and perceptions of those that have held a management position in a university. To his end, the study is based on the application of an adapted version of the Personal Construct Grid (Kelly, GA, 1955) and an in-depth interview. Participants: The participants are made up of between thirty heads of department who will be selected in accordance with their career in the university and their experience in a previous management position in the university. Data collection: Two different instruments for the data collection have been designed: 1. Personal Construct Grid (PCG) An instrument based on the technique of the Personal Construct Grid (R.C.P.; Kelly, 1955) has been designed in order to obtain the perceptions of the participant by using their own concepts. This kind of instrument has been applied by several authors to different fields in Education Sciences and Psychology and to diverse studies and groups of participants (Padilla, 2002). This author creates the P.C.G. as a part of the Personal Constructs theory in which the perception of the participants about their reality based on the interpersonal relationships is studied. This technique has been selected because it is possible to work with the “interpretative framework of reality” of each subject, beyond the simple measurement of the elicited items (Padilla, 2002). In the original P.C.G. there were three steps in the development that formed the basis of our instrument: the elicitation of elements, of constructs and of the grading of the intersection between them (Bottle and Feixas, 1998). In our grid, first of all, participants must identify tasks they consider typical of the management of the department and skills necessary to perform these tasks and give numbers depending on the importance of each one. 2. In-depth interview Once all the grids are obtained, all the participants are interviewed in order to obtain each participant’s general view of their management position. The interview questions, in addition to investigating some demographic data (such as age, gender, years of teaching experience and type of positions held), will focus on their professional trajectories, motivations, expectations and opinion about the need of training for the post. Data Analysis: owing to the qualitative and quantitative nature of the data that we will obtain, two type of analysis will be performed: a qualitative analysis (content analysis) and a quantitative analysis (statistical analysis).

Expected Outcomes

The results refer to four main areas. The first one presents the profile of the heads of department at the University of Seville by the analysis of demographic data (sex, age, gender, class, previous experience in management and years of teaching in the U.S.). Subsequently the results show their trayectory and experience in other middle-management posts and how they feel when they compare the post. We can also obtain information about the motivations of access to the management position, their expectations and which ones are the main aims of these group of people when the apply for the post. Subsequently, through the results we obtain an image of the head of the department in their daily practice, developing a list of the tasks they perform and another list of skills that were made for the implementation of them. The results also shows which ones are the main difficulties experienced in the daily performance of the position and develop improvement proposals are also discussed. Lastly, the results express the views of managers regarding the needs of training for the post and in which areas are considered more relevant. They also reflect the different views that exist on the professionalization of management positions and its implications. Another issues to bear in mind is that we obtain that there is a close relationship between the performance of the head of the department role and the the academic leadership, and that gender is one aspect that influences the management role in Universities nowadays.

References

Ball, S. J. (1987). The micro-politics of the school: towards a theory of school organization. New York: Routledge library editions. Bottle, L., y Feixas i Viaplana, G. (1998). Teoría de los constructos personales: Aplicaciones a la práctica psicológica. Barcelona: Laertes. Breakwell, G., y Tytherleigh, M. (2010). University leaders and university performance in the United Kingdom: Is it "who" leads, or "where" they lead that matters most? Higher Education: The International Journal of higher education and Educational Planning, 60(5), 491-506. Hogg, M. A., y Vaughan, G. M. (2011). Social psychology (6th ed.). England: Pearson. Infante Rejano, E. (2008). La tarea de liderar grupos. El grupo desde la perspectiva psicosocial : Conceptos básicos (1st ed., pp. 89-102) Ediciones Pirámide. Kelly, G.A. (1955, 1991). The psychology of personal constructs (vols. 1 y 2). London: Routledge. Kezar, A., y Lester, J. (2009). Supporting faculty grassroots leadership. Research in higher education, 50(7), 715-740. Llinàs-Audet, X., Girotto, M., y Solé Parellada, F. (2011). La dirección estratégica universitaria y la eficacia de las herramientas de gestión: El caso de las universidades españolas. Revista de Educación, 355, 33-54. López Yáñez, J., y Rando González, R. (2002). Condiciones organizativas de la enseñanza en la universidad. Bordón. Revista De Pedagogía, 54(4), 577-586. Mintzberg, H. (1992). El poder en la organización. Barcelona: Ariel. Mintzberg, H. (2005). La estructuración de las organizaciones (8ª ed.). Barcelona: Ariel. Padilla Carmona, M. T. (2002). Técnicas e instrumentos para el diagnóstico y la evaluación educativa. Madrid: Ccs. Schein, E. H. (1994). Psicología de la organización (3a ed.). México etc.: Prentice-Hall Hispanoamericana. Stephenson Jr., M. (2011). Conceiving land grant university community engagement as adaptative leadership. higher education: The International Journal of higher education and Educational Planning, 61(1), 95-108. Zabalza Beraza, M. A. (2000). El papel de los departamentos universitarios en la mejora de la calidad de la docencia. Revista Interuniversitaria De Formación Del Profesorado, (38), 47-66. Weinert, A. B. (1985). Manual de psicología de la organización: La conducta humana en las organizaciones. Barcelona: Herder. Weick, K. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1), 1-19.

Author Information

Inmaculada Martinez-Garcia (presenting / submitting)
University of Seville, Spain
M. Teresa Padilla-Carmona
University of Seville, Spain

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