Highly Cited Leaders and the Performance of Research Universities

Abstract

There is a large literature on the productivity of universities. Little is known, however, about how different types of leader affect a university s later performance. By constructing a new longitudinal data set, I provide evidence that the research quality of a university improves after it appoints a president (vice chancellor) who is an accomplished scholar. The findings have policy implications for governments, universities, and a range of research and knowledge-intensive organizations. AbstractThere is a large literature on the productivity of universities. Little is known, however, about how different types of leader affect a university s later performance. By constructing a new longitudinal data set, I provide evidence that the research quality of a university improves after it appoints a president (vice chancellor) who is an accomplished scholar. The findings have policy implications for governments, universities, and a range of research and knowledge-intensive organizations.

Organizational factors influencing scholarly performance: a multivariate study of biomedical research groups

“…First of all, three variables have the clearest impact on performance: (1) Self-categorization of the group leader as a committed researcher who is heavily involved in the groups' research. The mechanism may be that such an identity functions as an example for the group members, which results in higher aspiration levels (Goodall 2009;Heinze et al 2009); (2) Not too large and relatively flat groups consisting of (mostly two) research leaders and many young researchers; (3) Networking. This goes together with (4) a change in the funding landscape where group leaders become much more dependent on externally acquired project funding and on entrepreneurial skills required to do this.…”

“…The group leader should have skills in the care and feeding of all group members, as this is critical to the groups' success and productivity (Sindermann 1985). Goodall (2009) found that in research universities, high performance not only depends the research leader being a top scholar, but also on good leadership and management skills. Leadership also results in creative research.…”

“…The development of 'group science' or 'team science' poses new responsibilities on academic group leaders to create adequate organizational conditions that help meeting the collective and individual research goals such as high research performance (e.g. Amabile et al 2004;Bland and Ruffin 1992;Goodall 2009; Van der Weijden et al 2008b;Falk-Krzesinski et al 2011). Pelz and Andrews (1966) were the first who thoroughly investigated the organizational determinants for a stimulating research environment, highlighting communication, motivation, and group size as important variables that influence research performance.…”

Technology entrepreneurship research opportunities: insights from across Europe

“…manuscript (this issue) analyses the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and research group performance, and identifies how knowledge sharing mediates this relationship. According to the authors, a research group is the most common way to organize research within universities (Travaille and Hendriks 2010) and although previous studies have considered the strategic relevance of those groups (Van Looy et al 2006;Matsumoto et al 2010), fewer studies have explored the link between their strategy and performance (Wang et al 2006;Goodall 2009 Lumpkin and Dess 1996). The authors proposed a model to explore the positive and direct relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and research publication performance (H1), as well as, the mediating role of knowledge sharing in that relationship (H2).…”

Expert leaders in a fast-moving environment

“…Such work has attempted to separate CEO effects from industry or firm effects to calculate the explanatory power of leaders and their characteristics (e.g. Thomas 1988;Finkelstein & Hambrick, 1996;Waldman & Yammarino, 1999;Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002;Bertrand & Schoar, 2003;Jones and Olken 2005;Yukl, 2008;Mackey, 2008;Goodall 2009a;Souder, Simsek & Johnson, 2012;Dezs & Ross, 2012;Nohe, Michaelis, Menges, Zhang, & Sonntag, 2013). To estimate leaders' effects in an exact way within real-world settings is known to be problematic (Antonakis, Bendahan, Jacquart, &Lalive, 2010, Blettner, Chaddad andBettis, 2012); it is not possible, outside a laboratory, to randomly assign a leader to an organization.…”