Making Sense of Administrative Leadership

Book excerpt: An integration and synthesis of the theoretical literature on leadership with the literature concerning higher education as a social institution is presented. The literature on a conceptual explanation of leadership is reviewed and related directly to higher education and its sociological and organizational uniqueness. The first four of the report's five sections discuss the following topics and subtopics: (1) the contemporary context and calls for leadership (constraints in responding to the calls for leadership and overcoming constraints to leadership); (2) conceptual explanations of leadership (theories and models of leadership and organizational theory and images of leadership); (3) higher education and leadership theory (trait theories, power and influence theories, behavioral theories, contingency theories, cultural and symbolic theories, and cognitive theories); and (4) higher education and organizational theory (the university as bureaucracy--the structural frame, the university as collegium--the human resource frame, the university as political system--the political frame, the University as organized anarchy--the symbolic frame, the university as cybernetic system, and an integrated perspective of leadership in higher education). The fifth and final section, Overview and Integration, discusses the effectiveness of leadership, cognitive complexity, transformational and transactional leadership, leadership paradigms, thinking about leadership, and an agenda for research on leadership in higher education. The report contains approximately 250 references. (SM)