Balancing Academic Advancement with Business Effectiveness? The Dual Role for Senior University Leaders

Competing pressures have served to make universities increasingly complex organisations. Universities worldwide have been required to rely less on a “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” ethos to embrace a more “applied” or “user led” focus in an environment of mass education, decreased government funding and greater reliance upon collaboration with industry for funding of research and development. Concomitantly increasing administrative reporting and accreditation requirements see universities globally caught between the worlds of “Academe” and “business”. The question is how do universities build and maintain academic rigour while managing increasing internal and external accountabilities? How will the institution span its different “worlds” in the “unknown future” of the 21st century? Moreover, how are prepared are universities and education/knowledge organisations for the unprecedented age-related attrition which might be anticipated over the next five to ten years? This paper reviews literature and some evidence from the practice relating to management and leadership in university and knowledge environments. It scans external factors which might influence succession planning in leadership at a time when building leadership strength and safeguarding knowledge appears to be vital. The paper notes researched trends from data on perceptions of the practice of leading and managing in university and education/knowledge organisations and suggests some ways to harness organisational complexity positively to plan for a buoyant future