# data[].attributes.body
Leadership is one of the most discussed aspects which largely determines the success of the higher education institutions. It is also defined as a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the support of others in the accomplishment of a common task.  Leaders have to deal with the issues regarding both the diversified cohorts of people and the tasks in managing the university

How is academic leadership perceived by academic members?

One academic leader from a European university stated:

‘… Rector is the only one who has financial responsibility and decision power. We have to be informed; we have to support his agenda in term of budget. We don’t have the final decision, so the rector is always above us. So, he has the money, we have the expertise. So, if we want to spend his money, he has to relate the expertise. So, he is dependent on our loyalty and our expertise and we have dependent on his money. That’s how it works in my university…’.

A similar case has been shared by another leader from a European university:

‘… in university itself, vice rectors or advisors to the rector have some power because of their position, but people that you have chosen for this don`t have any power. They have to get the power from us, we have to write everything and sign. If we sign, other people care more…’.

Another academic leader from a Chinese university commented:

‘… the system in China is quite different from Western. We have a double kind of system. One is academic leadership. The other is party chair (party secretary- translator). They hold different responsibilities. For the academic leadership, it is mainly hold by the dean, rector, the president of the university. The party chair (party secretary) will have a kind of cooperation with the dean. The dean mainly focuses on the development of the disciplines, the scholars and kind of publications is an important push up, push up the ranking or apply different projects…’.

# data[].attributes.body
What does ‘becoming an academic leader’ mean?

Complementing on these main roles, some academic leaders explain the procedure of becoming an academic leader. As one academic leader from a European university puts it:

‘…in the continent of Europe, we speak of president when the position is given from outside university. So that is a job opening informing that the institute is looking for a new president. So, from all over the world, people can apply and there is a search community of the university that is in charge of finding the best candidate amongst applicants. If this is the way that president is found then according to continental European law, you call this person a president of the university. If the university or the country law defines the higher position as a rector. That means, according to the law, the rector has to be found amongst professors of the university. You cannot apply from outside in fact. Ok, I want to be a rector of the higher university. No, it is impossible. But for example, we call the person rector although he was chosen as a president. But it is a usual procedure like in Germany, for example, Free University of Berlin, they have a president because they made an open job. While the Hamburg university, they have rector. It implied that the rector comes from inside the university…’.

A comment from a Chinese academic member below illustrates:

‘…First of all, we need to know that the president of the university is appointed by the Ministry of Education. It is not chosen by the university. We have the right of recommendation, but it is the limited right. And it is especially for the president, we have recommendation right. For Vice-President, or the Vice- Chair of party secretary, they are not chosen by us. Maybe we have recommendation as well. It depends…’.

# data[].attributes.body
What does analytics for leadership mean and how does it work?

In today’s highly competitive higher education institutions there is a need for academic analytics to build stronger institutions, to plan better and make more efficient decisions. Commenting on analytics for academic leaders, one of the academic leaders from a European university shared her experience at her university:

‘…Academic leaders can strengthen their planning and decision-making abilities with the help of strong analytics support through well-established offices and infrastructure. In my university, there is a new infrastructure developed to support strategic planning, monitoring and building new strategies. That system allows the university to collect data from all levels about how much and what they performed towards our strategic plans. The goals are deployed down to the level. They have a chance to report what they have done over the time. We collect data with the results and draw dashboards for the managers. So, they can evaluate their achievements. They report back to us what they plan to do the next time…’.

# data[].attributes.body
How do academic leaders perceive cooperation and collaboration?

International cooperation is almost a mandatory practice for the countries’ visibility on science and technology and trust building among countries as well as engagement of the researchers among others. In the era of internationalization, EU and China, as pivotal forces, have placed a crucial importance on collaboration in all aspects due to the associated benefits and opportunities. This view was echoed by a European academic leader as follows:

‘…in Europe, where the cultures and expressions are diverse, educational institutions were developed which is more flexible, adjustable to the different cultural and social reality. Moreover, European educational systems benefit from tremendous amount of autonomy. Consequently, there are different optimal behaviours for the academic leadership and governance systems amongst European universities. In China, on the contrary, specific policies are defined by a single government. Hence, they have all advantages of being able to define a policy of education for each university. Actually, this is a tremendous advantage in the sense that it allows universities know what each other doing and also can combine strategies in order to have local development and contribute to national development. In terms of academic leadership, people are generally responsible for governance to follow the direction of the macro policies from the central government (policies, strategies, recruitment of human resource, etc.). Two systems are quite different that can lead to place where we can, in the fruitful way, understand advantages, problems, approaches and compare the way how educational institutions in two continents are developed in the near future. I would say that the future depends on our cooperation and understanding…’.

# data[].attributes.body
What is academic leadership style and how does it work?

A leadership style is how a leader provides direction, implement plans and motivate people. It can also be perceived as the way of leaders’ using power and competence. Leadership styles are generally identified by leaders’ personal strategies and approaches to achieve the objectives. A leader’s style can have a negative or positive impact on shaping employee behaviour and influencing their performance and motivation.

Below are some stories and comments of some academic leaders regarding academic leadership style. An academic leader from a European university gives an example from a private university:

‘… Let me give an example from a small private university. There is a very dynamic, transformative leader in this private university. This rector is appointed by the foundation of the university who was previously a vice president of another public university, very successful vice president. She has very good communication skills. In a very short time, she had several meetings and workshops with almost all stakeholders. She put forward a lot of radical changes. She is a transformational leader. This is well received by the university community because they have been waiting for such changes for a long time. Some of them are questionable such as very high pressure for publication, project, and budget. She is an exceptional example for my country…’.

Another academic leader in a European university provides her comments regarding leadership style:

‘…We`re trying to be transformational and servant leaders for our own university. I am definitely servant leader, writing all the reports, collect all data. This is not a good leadership style for the university and me. I think people in my position should more concentrate on visionary and strategic issues rather than operational ones. Since I have poor support from the offices and also, I am not good at engaging other people in supporting all the managerial activities, most of time I do most of the things by myself. I lack skills in persuading and engaging people. I actually give courses in communication, conflict resolutions to the university leaders, industry, and total quality management staff. It is not important to know the rules and tell the steps to the people. What is important is that you, as a leader, need support. You end up doing things on your own in the short term. I thought this was a temporary situation, and then I end up doing everything. Normally, staff head of department should provide this; however, we are not structured in this way. They don`t help us, you have to find your way on your own. In university, I feel one junior level leader is capable of helping on operational issues. We work together, but they don`t benefit from this because it is informal…’.

An academic leader from a Chinese university mentioned the leadership style as follows:

‘…Consensual leadership. I think it is quite strong in China.  So, you do leadership on the basis of consensus. You always try to find consensus, you either create a consensus. This is very important in China and this is a leadership model…’.

Another academic leader proposes to adopt this leadership style in a European university. She commented:

‘… I would always advice to go for consensual leadership. I think that many people will actually do it without knowing because you are so close to your people so you cannot act as a tyrant because then people will get very unhappy and then they will think very bad about you and you know because they are doing in the office next door. So, at the lower level, I think finding and creating consensus is extremely important. So, you don’t have strategic ideas so much, you don’t have normative approach, you try to find, to build your department, your research group as a functioning social aesthetic…’.

# data[].attributes.body
How do academic members perceive ‘good leadership’?

Good leadership is defined as building collective vision and mission and creating appropriate set of values as well as establishing trust and respect (Cooper & Nirenberg, 2004). They further argue that these help people to focus on their contributions. According to Kotter (1996), a good leader creates a culture which even excels after the leader has left. The perceptions among European and Chinese leaders differ in what make a good leader.

In Chinese universities, according to some academic members, a good leader should have strategies, can push up ranking, publications or other academic issue for the university. An academic leader from a Chinese university stated:

‘…money is not their responsibilities actually. They should have effective strategies to push up all around development, not only the money. The salary should be higher than before. The discipline can be better. We put the trust on rector…’.

In European universities, on the contrary, according to some academic members, a good leader should bring the resource to the university and also know how to spend them effectively. A leader from a European university puts it as follows:

‘…in my case, if the rector brings resource. If he needs the academic discussion in the country. If he is look like more policy maker for not only our institution but the whole country because our university is served as a leading institution, he should lead the academic discussion in the country. If we have an academic issue, the rector should guide the policy in the country. For us, this is a good rector if you save academic, basically, not in politic. If you are more in politic then you don’t have much academic side. If he sees how we spend resource in the country on higher education, he is a good rector…’.

Similar to the service mission in European universities, another leader from a Chinese university mentioned:

‘…We also have this kind of situation. We mentioned the inside management, we all have service mission, we provide service for society. It is important for us. For me, the rector will design a system of how to lack the resource consequence like the plants, animals, to use in the reality, to use this kind of resource consequence to have productivity and to be popular in the market. They will design this kind of system because we are an agriculture university…’

# data[].attributes.body
An academic leader from a European University tells his story:

‘… I have initiated a discussion on the nature of the Ph.D. program at my university. But our university, when it comes to academic practices, is very conservative. Even having this discussion is an accomplishment in itself. When we do something new, when we step-out of what we call routines, this is satisfactory…’.

A Chinese academic leader:

‘… Actually, I haven’t had much experience in this position since I just took office a few months ago. But I do have to mention that every year, my master students successfully publish papers in the main journals of Peking University. As well, despite the current situation in China with the Covid-19 epidemic, the university’s courses and online teaching arrangements, as well as the work of the Faculty of Teacher Education are progressing smoothly…’.

# data[].attributes.body
What are the perceived challenges among academic members for being an academic leader?

Gmelch (2013) states that academic leaders typically get this position without leadership training, without even realizing the complexity of their roles and its cost to their lives. Moreover, leadership is sometimes perceived as a burden for research since leaders may need to spend more time on leadership rather than on research. When they become leaders, it is typical that they have difficulties combining these roles in one person, so finding the balance seems to be a challenge for many leaders (CASEAR, 2014). These challenges may vary between countries or even between universities in the same country.

Below a leader from a European university emphasizes role conflict:

‘…When you become a leader, you forget your previous position as a teacher. Some forget they will turn one day to the previous place. People in this situation sometimes use their legal power and talk pedantically, you have to do this. You have to consider you will turn back to the same department. They should keep the balance. For example, we had a middle level leader who was responsible for research. He made some changes in the rules and sent this to the tenured professors in spite of being an assistant professor. He told them that they had to do the implementation as he said. This causes a big problem. It should be handled carefully…’.

Consistent with the European side, an academic leader from a Chinese university utters his challenge in different roles:

‘…For me, I also face some challenges between management and research. I am in charge of department’s social service and it is just to apply research to educational fields, social sciences, educational researches to the school, basically education. It is also a balance between research and social services of the school…’.

Because of the challenges in the position, people may be unwilling to get this position. An academic leader from a European university explains how they overcome this challenge:

‘…in our contract, we have paragraph saying every professor have to take over the administrative job including head of department. So, if the department has the rotation routine and everybody have to try. It is good because they can find out if he/she has ability to do so…’.

Another leader from a Chinese university focuses on the challenges caused by macro management:

‘… Macro management system (MMS) is very important. In China, there are many policies to support development of MMS. Management regulation approaches can have significant impact on development of university. Academic leaders face a lot of challenges when holding new management roles including international research and other responsibilities…’.

# data[].attributes.body
An academic leader from a European University:

‘… The LEAD2 project provides possibilities for international collaboration to widen academic practice. It has contribution to myself and to my institution. For myself, I have met good leaders, strong leaders in the LEAD2 project meetings, workshops, and through the network itself. Talking to these people is in itself instructive and inspires me to think and see the issues I am confronting in myorganization differently. It broadens your horizons. For my institution, the LEAD2 project provides possibilities for international collaboration to widen academic practice. For example, whenever we need an international collaboration, I always refer to the LEAD2 project or the connections that I built through LEAD2…’

# data[].attributes.body
What are the (perceived) motivations of academic members to become an academic leader?

Motivation is the reason for an action. It further helps to express a behaviour which may result in reward or punishment (Tella et al., 2007). They state that it is like the relationship among need, drive and incentive. If there is a need, this will urge a person to perform an action i.e. drive, and if the person performs an action then he/she may get desired reward i.e. incentive.  According to a broader concept proposed by Hertzberg, Mausner and Snyderman (1959), there are two types of motivation: intrinsic coming from the person and extrinsic coming from the organization. What motivation includes in academic settings are described below by European and Chinese leaders.

A Chinese academic leader puts it as follows:

‘…in China, some leaders at the top level, they don’t have relationship with the research group. Some rectors in Chinese universities, they don’t conduct research with their team anymore because they get into prominent political position. They often change from 1 university to other university. Normally, they can move up to the higher top-ranking universities. If you want to answer the question, why do they want to become an academic leader? For this, very very top university, they want to become, a member of government, either in their province or in the country. They need to be very representative, be in a very good relationship with the country government…’.

A leader from a European university echoes the similar motivation for becoming an academic leader.

‘…Many rectors in my university or others want to become a rector because they want to jump up in politic. They have such ambition and they design to be more and more power, and this is the main motivation to become a president…’.

Another Chinese academic leader comments on the opportunities of being an academic leader as follows:

‘…I am the representative of my university. I am in middle level.  My university gives support for the middle level academic leaders. First, the university platform gives us more opportunities for the research. They can promote their academic professional development and the innovation and application of their project. Academic leaders foster natural project and some regional projects for our own province. The second one is that the university gives us honour to promote and develop the confidence and patience of our research. The third opportunity is the systematic design for middle level academic leaders. In my university, we have built reward system which makes the scholar to be the core of the university. There is also the opportunity for housing. My university offered me a good fortune. That is a very nice salary for me. After coming here, I have gained more chance. I am the director of International office in my university. They offered me some opportunities, like to attend Erasmus+ projects. Other universities in China, young scholars may not have these opportunities to attend such incentives, projects…’.

Focusing on the responsibility, an academic leader from a European university utters:

‘… The second important thing is how much you are identified in your institution. You have to work so much; you are in normal pressure and many things you need to do that you never do as a researcher. You really need to consider if you want to spend so much time on this or you don’t identify with your university. You will regret so much. So, identification at the institution is extremely important. And then I think everyone I met in the contest is someone who has highly feeling of responsibility and beautifulness…’.

# data[].attributes.body
An academic leader from a European University:

‘… The strongest body in our administration is the academic board, where we have all the heads of the departments. First, I always get myself informed about the issues and typically, when we discuss things, I collect information. Then I raise the issue in front of the department heads, and I ask the simple question- "What do you think?" Then it works by itself as a chemical reaction. They start to discuss amongst themselves…’.

An academic leader from a Chinese University shares:

‘… After learning and understanding new ideas, I would share the relevant materials I have learned with the team I manage; if possible, it is best to lead the team to visit and exchange in the field to experience the new ideas and ideas first-hand, which would have better effect…’.

# data[].attributes.body
An academic leader from a European University:

‘… I involve my team members to keep them focused. In my team, I have two assistants and one advisor. The advisor's role is very clear and concrete. For the others, I have a distribution of tasks. The department heads are independent in their functions, but from time to time, I need certain minor things from them. I always allocate tasks, and of course, I always want to get their perspectives. Because by doing so, it prevents mistakes. Our faculty is very heterogeneous. I have advisors and assistants from different disciplines. They bring their own perspective. This is very important. When I do it in this way, I eliminate the risk of making mistakes…’.

# data[].attributes.body
A young academic leader from a Chinese University expresses in which areas he needs to develop himself:

‘… I hope that I can further improve my language expression and communication, and foreign languages. I hope I will have opportunities to actively participate in leadership training and development, and further improve related skills…’