Faculty's Academic Intellectual Leadership: Predictive Relations with Several Organizational Characteristics of Universities

The purpose of this research is to examine the predictive relations between faculty's academic intellectual leadership, and communication, climate and managerial flexibility regarding scholarly practices in universities. For this purpose, the research was designed in correlational research pattern, and, to collect data, an online questionnaire composed of Organizational Communication, Organizational Climate, Managerial Flexibility Regarding Scholarly Practices and Academic Intellectual Leadership scales was sent via e-mail to faculty who work in different disciplines in Turkish public universities. The questionnaires responded to by 504 faculties were included in the data analysis, and then descriptive, correlation and regression analyses were performed. According to the findings, Managerial Flexibility Regarding Service Practices is a significant predictor for all dimensions of academic intellectual leadership; Managerial Flexibility Regarding Teaching Practices for only the Guardian dimension; Supported Structurally, a dimension of the organizational climate, for Ambassador and Acquistor dimensions. This result shows that faculty's perceptions about climate in universities and the managerial support for scholarly duties strongly affect their academic intellectual leadership. Therefore, to enhance faculty's academic intellectual leadership behaviors, university managers can initiate different mechanisms such as learning-teaching centers, media advisory units and sporting-social event bureaus besides research-based facilities. University managers should also generate a more positive work environment by encouraging academics to follow their scholarly interests and recognizing academics' various achievements with material and moral rewards within the institution