Enhancing the Role and Leadership Capacity in University Culture Development at Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

Organizational culture in general and school/university culture in particular are always initiated by leaders/founders, and the positive school/university culture by its turn will help the institution reach the goal of sustainable development. The paper focuses on the following objectives (1) to give an overview of university culture from the view of organizational culture with the emphasis on the core values, an analysis of the leaders' role in shaping university culture, next (2) to explore the concensus on some cultural values officially disseminated among the member institutions of VNU-HCM so as to recommend some shared values in VNU-HCM, and finally (3) to find out the advantages and disadvantages in leading the development of university culture and to recommend ways to enhance leadership. The authors used a combination of interdisciplinary theoretical research methods and conducted a survey of 153 lecturers and 157 staff members by the use of questionnaires; they also conducted in-depth interviews with some leaders/managers and small group interviews with some lecturers, staff members from 2 VNU-HCM member universities out of the 6 previously surveyed universities. The result confirms the important role of leadership in developing university culture and shows that the values which the majority agrees upon and supports include Responsibility, Creativity, Collaboration, etc. which can be shared among VNU-HCM. In addition to the advantages, there have still been some disadvantages and limitations to be overcome by the leaders in determining and explaining the content of those published values to stakeholders for better understanding and embedding them into the strategies and operations of the institutions in reality.

The needs of digital scholarship services at Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City

“…In reality, many users may be unaware of their digital scholarship needs (Craft, 2018). A study conducted by Ninh et al (2021) at VNU-HCM revealed that the university community had a limited understanding of digital scholarship. The concept was regularly identified based on their individual experiences or observations of technology utilization in institutions.…”

“…A lack of knowledge and insight may lead to an inclination to work in isolation and a lack of cooperation between researchers (Lewis et al, 2015). Enhancing digital scholarship competence and support services relies on university community's knowledge of digital scholarship (Ninh et al, 2021). Therefore, by raising users' awareness and expertise in digital scholarship, they can more effectively comprehend and utilize DSSs (Li et al, 2020).…”