CONCEPTUAL MODELS FOR DEVELOPMENTAL NEEDS OF ACADEMIC MIDDLE MANAGERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Development of employees by the Human Resources (HR) department in any organization is crucial to implementing its strategy, processes and procedures for success. The same principle applies to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in which academic Middle Managers (MMs) are the balancing drivers who execute organization’s vision and mission and contribute towards its goals. At faculty level, academic MMs roles include Deans, Head of Departments, Subject leaders and Principal lecturers/Programme leaders. However, emergent from contemporary literature studies shows that HEIs structures and systems are rapidly changing and highly impacting academic MMs in their roles. Thus, the changes and challenges transpiring in the HEIs sector are inducing and creating colossal pressures and workloads for academic MMs to work effectively and efficiently in their respective roles. Contributing to this burden, are factors such as; an increase in student numbers and retention, bureaucracy, accountability and reporting, policies, skills, management and leadership development and practice, globalisation and international outlook, competition and league tables, resources, technological advances, quality teaching, learning and research, providing value and creating balance. Based on these notions, the research aim is to create conceptual models for developmental needs of academic MMs in HEIs via a mixed methodology implemented in three phases. The findings of this research through qualitative enquiry identified fifteen factors during semi-structured interviews, six main categories using grounded theory approach, and eight main themes in case studies. In quantitative approach, seventeen factors using univariate analysis and sixteen factors using factor analysis were identified. The originality of this study contributed to the theory, practice and research of academic MMs developmental needs by; new interpretations of the authors in the field, testing and adding to theories, synthesizing work and offering work perspectives, carrying out innovative research in UK and detailed work across methods