Leadership Values, Trust and Negative Capability: Managing the Uncertainties of Future English Higher Education

Abstract

The complex leadership attribute of ' Gradual erosion of trust: an uncertain future for English higher educationIt can be argued that current multiple uncertainties about the future of English higher education may be leading to a gradual erosion of trust in the values, collegial ethos and civic role of universities. It also could be argued that they are not and that nothing much has really changed. This paper considers evidence from higher education respondents in querying whether the professional autonomy and values of older Humboldtian scholarly and collegial understandings of the role of universities as a higher public good are gradually fading in an era of marketisation and bs_bs_banner Higher Education Quarterly, 0951-5224

Critical corridor talk: Just gossip or stoic resistance? Unrecognised informal Higher Education leadership

“…Building on prior definitions of negative capability as non‐formulaic responsiveness to uncertainty in collective academic leadership (Jameson, ; Simpson & French, ; Simpson, French, & Harvey, ; Unger, ), this paper reflects on the space for moral resistance that may be involved in this almost hidden commentary, arguably a form of serious gossip within institutional talk (Curren, ; Heritage, ; Leach, ). The stoical quality of negative capability emerging from the CCT data seemed to withstand difficulties by balancing articulated uncertainties with selective action, while continuing pragmatically to serve common institutional purposes.…”

“…The significant literature on NPM identified above (Clarke & Newman, ; Deem, ; Deem & Brehony, ; Lea, ; McNay, ) has discussed in depth various issues relating to managerial dysfunctionality in Higher Education and the growing resistance to this. This includes considerable prior literature on the extent to which academic resistance has been growing to economically driven authoritarianism (Ball, ; Deem, ; Gill, ; Jameson, , ; Leathwood, & Read, ; Lucas, ; McNay, ; Scott, ; Slaughter & Leslie, , amongst others).…”

“…Hence, this paper puts forward a series of excerpts and findings from empirical data, underpinning a proposed theoretical philosophical model, to identify this quietly persistent feature. The model is overtly informed by prior literature on resistance (Lucas, ; Scott, ), criticality (Barnett, ), stoicism (Irvine, ), leadership, managerialism and performativity (Ball, ; Deem, ; Jameson, ; Leathwood & Read, ; McNay, ; Slaughter & Leslie, ), and tacit knowledge (Eraut, ; Polanyi, ). It is drawn from empirical data collected during 2005–2017 and from the researcher’s analysis of findings and reflections on leadership and trust in Higher Education over the same period.…”

Institutional Governance Structures

“…The development of effective governance cultures (Baird, 2006) The characteristics of effective boards (Rowlands, 2013b) Factors influencing the governance paradigm of universities (Christopher, 2012) The characteristics of higher education leadership (Bryman, 2007) Academics' commitment to mergers (Puusa and Kekäle, 2013) The role of university board members (Kretek, Dragšić and Kehm, 2013) Shared governance (Stensaker and Vabø, 2013) The characteristics of boards (Taylor and de Lourdes Machado, 2008) Tensions between marketization and academization (Ek et al, 2013) The role of university board members (Kretek et al, 2013) Distributed leadership and its effectiveness (van Ameijde et al, 2009) The characteristics of higher education leadership (Bolden, Petrov and Gosling, 2008;Breakwell and Tytherleigh, 2010;Bryman, 2007;Jameson, 2012) Characteristics of supervisory boards (de Boer, Huisman and Meister-Scheytt, 2010) The factors impacting on the functioning of merged institutions (Locke, 2007) Factors influencing the governance paradigm of universities (Christopher, 2012) The characteristics of strategic planning (Lillis and Lynch, 2014) Board members' influence on the boards' identity and work (Meister-Scheytt, 2007;Rytmeister, 2009) External structure and organization…”

“…The characteristics of higher education leadership have been dealt with in a number of studies on universities in the United Kingdom (Bolden et al, 2008;Breakwell and Tytherleigh, 2010;Bryman, 2007;Jameson, 2012). As we note in the subsequent section on North America, Bryman (2007) discussed how policy changes in the past few decades have placed new demands on leadership and searched for indications of effective leadership based on studies in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.…”