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Reclaiming the academic community: why universities need more than metrics

by Sigurður Kristinsson

For decades, talk of “the academic community” has flowed easily through mission statements, strategy documents, and speeches from university leadership. Yet few stop to consider what this community is or why it matters. As universities increasingly orient themselves toward markets, rankings, and performance metrics, the gap between the ideal of academic community and the lived reality of academic work has widened. But this drift is not merely unfortunate; it threatens the very values that justify the existence of universities in the first place.

This blog explores why academic community is essential to higher education, how contemporary systems undermine it, and what a renewed vision of academic life might require.

What do we mean when we talk about “community”?

The word “community” can be used in two different senses. One is descriptive: communities are simply networks of people connected by place, shared interests or regular interaction. From this sociological standpoint, academic communities consist of overlapping groups (faculty, students, administrators, service professionals) brought together by institutional roles, disciplinary identities, or digital networks, perhaps experiencing a sense of belonging, solidarity, and shared purpose.

But in debates about the purpose and future of universities, “community” is often used in a normative sense: an ideal of how academics ought to relate to one another. In Humboldtian (1810) spirit, contemporary advocates like Fitzpatrick (2021, 2024) and Bennett (1998, 2003) envision academic community as a moral and intellectual culture grounded in shared purpose, generosity, intellectual hospitality, mutual respect, and the collective pursuit of knowledge. From this philosophical perspective, community is not just a cluster of networks to be analyzed empirically but a normative vision of how scholarly life becomes meaningful. This aspirational view stands in stark contrast to the conditions shaping many universities today.

The pressures pulling academic life apart

For several decades, developments in universities around the world have been hostile to academic community. While the precise mechanisms vary, academics report strikingly similar pressures: managerial oversight, performance auditing, intensifying competition, and the steady erosion of collegial structures and shared governance. Five threats to academic community are particularly worrisome:

Organisational (not occupational) professionalism

In her analysis of how managerial logic has co-opted the language of professionalism to justify top-down control in public institutions, Julia Evetts (2003, 2009, 2011) introduced a distinction between occupational and organisational professionalism. Occupational professionalism in academia implies membership in a self-governing community of experts committed to serving society through knowledge. Today, however, universities increasingly define professionalism in organisational terms: compliance with targets, performance indicators, and standardised procedures. The result is a hybrid system: academics retain some autonomy, but it is overshadowed by bureaucratic accountability structures that fragment communal relationships and discourage collective responsibility (Siekkinen et al, 2020).

Managerialism

Managerialism prizes measurable production outputs, standardized procedures, and vertical decision-making. As Metz (2017) argues, these mechanisms degrade communal relationships among academics as well as between them and managers, students, and wider society: decisions are imposed without consultation; bonus systems reward narrow indicators rather than communal priorities; and bureaucratic layers reduce opportunities for collegial dialogue. Managerialism replaces trust with surveillance and collegial judgment with quantification.

Individualism

The rise of competition – over publications, grants, rankings, and prestige – has amplified what Bennett (2003) called “insistent individualism.” Colleagues become rivals or useful instruments. Achievements become personal currency. In such settings, it is easy to see oneself not as part of a community pursuing shared goods but as an isolated producer of measurable outputs. This ethos erodes the solidarity and relationality necessary for any robust academic culture.

Retreat from academic citizenship

Academic citizenship refers to the contributions – committee work, mentoring, governance, public engagement – that sustain universities beyond research and teaching. Yet because these activities are difficult to measure and often unrewarded, they are increasingly neglected (Macfarlane, 2005; Feldt et al, 2024). This neglect fragments institutions and weakens the norms of shared responsibility that should hold academic life together.

Troubled collegiality

Collegiality includes participatory and collective decision-making, a presumption of shared values, absence of hierarchy, supportiveness, a shared commitment to a common good, trust beyond a typical workplace, and professional autonomy. It has long been central to academic identity but has become contested. Some experience collegial labor as invisible and unevenly distributed; others see managerial attempts to measure collegiality as just another way of disciplining staff. Efforts to quantify collegiality may correct some injustices but also risk instrumentalizing it, turning a relational ideal into a bureaucratic category (Craig et al, 2025; Fleming and Harley, 2024; Gavin et al, 2023).

Across all these pressures, a common thread emerges: the forces shaping contemporary academia weaken the relationships required for intellectual work to flourish.

Why academic community matters

If community is eroding, why should we care? The answer lies in the link between community and the values that higher education claims to serve. A helpful framework comes from value theory, which distinguishes between instrumental, constitutive, and intrinsic goods.

Community as instrumentally valuable

Academic community helps produce the outcomes universities care about: research breakthroughs, learning, intellectual development, and democratic engagement. Collaboration makes research stronger. Peer support helps people grow. Shared norms encourage integrity, rigor, and creativity. Without community, academic values become harder to realize.

Community as constitutive of academic values

In many cases, community is not merely a helpful means but a necessary constituent. Scientific knowledge, as philosophers of science like Merton (1979) and Longino (1990) have long emphasized, is inherently social: it requires communal critique, peer review, and collective norms to distinguish knowledge from error. Learning, too, is fundamentally relational, as Vygotsky (1978) and Dewey (1916) argued. You cannot have science or education without community.

Community as intrinsically valuable

Beyond producing useful outcomes, community enriches human life. Belonging, shared purpose, and intellectual companionship are deeply fulfilling. Academic community offers a sense of identity, meaning, and solidarity that transcends individual achievement (Metz, 2017). In this sense, community contributes directly to human flourishing.

How community shapes academic life

Several examples show how academic values depend on community in practice:

Debates about educational values

The pursuit of academic values requires reflection on their meaning. Interpretive arguments about values like autonomy, virtue, or justice in education contribute to conversations that presuppose the collective norms of academic community (Nussbaum, 2010; Ebels-Duggan, 2015). These debates require shared standards of reasoning, openness to critique, and a shared commitment to better understanding.

Scientific knowledge and academic freedom

No individual can produce knowledge alone. Scientific communities ensure that discoveries are evaluated, replicated, and integrated into a larger body of understanding. Likewise, academic freedom is not a personal privilege but a communal norm that protects open inquiry (Calhoun, 2009; Frímannsson et al, 2022). It depends on solidarity among scholars.

Teaching as communal practice

Education flourishes in relational settings. Classrooms become communities in which teachers and students jointly pursue understanding. Weithman (2015) describes this as “academic friendship” – a form of companionship that expands imagination, fosters intellectual virtues, and shapes future citizens.

Across these cases, community is not optional; it is essential to academic values.

Rebuilding scademic community: structural and cultural change

Given its importance, how might universities cultivate stronger academic communities?

Structural reform

Universities should try to resist the dominance of market logic. Sector-wide policy changes could help rebalance priorities. Hiring, promotion, and reward systems should value teaching, service, mentorship, and public engagement rather than focusing exclusively on quantifiable research metrics. Without structural support, cultural change will be difficult.

Cultural renewal

A healthier academic culture requires a different mindset—one that foregrounds generosity, relationality, and shared purpose. In Generous Thinking, Fitzpatrick (2021) argues that building real community requires humility, conversation, listening, and collaboration. Community cannot be mandated; it must be practised.

This requires academics to challenge competitive individualism, share work equitably, strengthen trust and dialogue, and reimagine collegiality as a lived practice rather than a managerial tool. Most importantly, it requires us to recognize ourselves as fundamentally relational beings whose professional purpose is intertwined with others.

A moral case for academic community

Academic community is not only epistemically valuable; it is morally significant. Relational moral theories argue that human flourishing depends on identity and solidarity. We become the moral human beings we are through our communal relationships (Metz, 2021).

Applying this to academia reveals that collegiality is grounded in shared identity and shared ends. Since the moral obligations created by academic relationships remain professional, collegial community does not require intrusive intimacy. Far from suppressing dissent or professional autonomy, solidarity requires defending academic freedom and academic values generally.

A relational understanding of morality thus implies that the ideal of academic community promises not only a more fulfilling and coherent sense of occupational purpose, but also a way of relating to others that is more satisfying morally than the current environment individualistic competition.

Conclusion: the future depends on community

Universities today face an existential challenge. In the rush to satisfy markets, rankings, and managerial demands, they risk undermining the very relationships that make academic life meaningful. Academic community is not a nostalgic ideal; it is the cornerstone of learning, knowledge, virtue, and human flourishing.

If higher education is to reclaim a sense of purpose, it must begin by cultivating the social and moral conditions in which genuine community can grow. This requires structural reforms, cultural renewal, and a shared commitment to relational values. Without such efforts, universities will continue drifting toward fragmentation, losing sight of the goods they exist to protect.

Rebuilding academic community is not merely desirable. It is necessary – for the integrity of scholarship, for the flourishing of those who work within universities, and for the public good that higher education is meant to serve.

Sigurður Kristinsson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. His research applies moral and political philosophy in various contexts of professional practice, increasingly intersecting with the philosophy of higher education with emphasis on the social and democratic role of universities.


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Collegiality and competition in German Centres of Excellence

by Lautaro Vilches

Collegiality, although threatened by increasing competitive pressures and described as a slippery and elastic concept, remains a powerful ideal underpinning academic and intellectual practices. Drawing on two empirical studies, this blog examines the relationships between collegiality and competition in Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in Germany. These CoEs are conceptualised as a quasi-departmental new university model that contrasts with the ‘university of chairs’, which characterises the old Humboldtian university model, organised around chairs led by professors. Hence my research question: How do academics experience collegiality, and how does it relate to competition, within CoEs in the SSH?

In 2006, the government launched the Excellence Strategy (then known as the Excellence Initiative), which includes a scheme providing long-term funding for Centres of Excellence. Notably, this scheme extends beyond the traditionally more collaborative Natural Sciences, to encompass the Social Sciences and Humanities. Germany, therefore, offers a unique case to explore transformations of collegiality amidst co-existing and overlapping university models. What, then, are the key features of these models?

In the old model of the ‘university of chairs’ the chair constitutes the central organisational unit of the university, with each one led by a single professor. Central to this model is the idea of collegial leadership according to which professors govern the university autonomously, a practice that can be traced back to the old scholastic guild of the Middle Ages. During the eighteenth century, German universities underwent a process of modernisation influenced by Renaissance ideals, culminating in the establishment of University of Berlin in Prussia in 1810 by Wilhelm von Humboldt. By the late nineteenth century, the Humboldtian model of the university had become highly influential, as it offered an organisational template in which the ideals of academic autonomy, academic freedom and the  integration of research and teaching were institutionalised.

Within the university of chairs, collegiality is effectively ‘contained’ and enacted within individual chairs. In this structure, professors have no formal superiors and academic staff are directly subordinate to a single professor (as chair holder) – not an institute or faculty. As a result, the university of chairs is characterised by several small and steep hierarchies.

In recent decades – alongside the rise of the United States as the hegemonic power – the Anglo-American departmental model spread across the world, a shift that is associated with the entrepreneurial transformation of universities as they respond to growing competitive pressures.

Remarkably, CoEs in the SSH in Germany are organised as ‘quasi-departments’ resembling a multidisciplinary Anglo-American department. They are very large in comparison with other collaborative grants, often comprising more than 100 affiliated researchers. They are structured around several ‘Research Areas’ and led by 25 Principal Investigators (mostly professors) who must agree on the implementation of the multidisciplinary and integrated research programme on which the CoE is based.

The historical implications of this new model cannot be overstated. CoEs appear to operate as Trojan horses: cloaked in the prestige of excellence, they have introduced a fundamentally different organisational model into the German university of chairs, an institution that has endured over centuries.

Against the backdrop of these two models, what are the implications for collegiality and its relation to competition? A few clarifications are necessary. First, much of the research on collegiality has focused on governance, ignoring that collegiality is also practised ‘on the ground’. Here, I will define collegiality (a) as form of ‘leadership and governance’, involving relations among leaders as well as interactions between leaders and those they govern; (b) as an ‘intellectual practice’ that can be best observed in the enactments of collaborative research; and (c) as a form of ‘citizenship’, involving practices that signify belonging to the CoE and its academic community.

Second, adopting this broader understanding requires acknowledging that collegiality is not only experienced by professors (in governing collegialy the university) but also by the ‘invisible’ academic demos, namely Early Career Researchers (ECRs). Although often employed in precarious positions, ECRS are nonetheless significant members of the academic community, in particular in CoEs, which explicitly prioritise the training of ECRs as a core objective. Whilst ECRs are committed full time to the CoE and sustain much of its collaborative research activity, professors remain simultaneously bound to the duties of their respective positions as chairs.

A third clarification concerns our normative assumptions underpinning collegiality and its relationship to competition. Collegiality is sometimes idealised as an unambiguously positive value and practice in academia, whilst competition – in contrast – is seen as a threat to collegiality. However, this idealised depiction tends to underplay, for example, the role of hierarchies in academia and often invokes an indeterminate past – perhaps somewhere in the 1960s – when universities were governed autonomously by male professors and generously funded through block grants – largely protected from competition pressures or external scrutiny.

These contextual conditions have evidently changed over recent decades: competition, both at institutional and individual terms, has intensified in academia, and CoE schemes exemplify this shift. CoE members, especially ECRs, are therefore embedded in multiple and overlapping competitions: at the institutional level through the CoE’s race for excellence; and at the individual level, through the competition for getting a position in the CoE, as well as for grants, publications, and networks necessary for career advancement.

How are collegiality and competition intertwined in the CoE? I identify three complex dynamics:

  • ‘The temporal flourishing of intellectual collegiality’ refers to the blooming of collegiality as part of the collaborative research work in the CoE. ECRs describe extensive engagement in organising, leading or co-leading research seminars (alongside PIs or other postdoctoral researchers), co-editing books, developing digital collaborative platforms, inviting researchers from abroad to join the CoE or organising and participating in informal meetings. Within this dynamic, competition is presented as being located ‘outside’ the CoE, temporarily deactivated. However, at the same time, ECRs remain aware of the omnipresence of competition, which ultimately threatens collegial collaboration when career paths, research topics or publications begin to converge. For this reason, intellectual collegiality and competition stand in an exclusionary relationship.
  • ‘The rise of CoE citizenship for the institutional race of excellence’ captures the strong sense of engagement and commitment shown by ECRs (but also professors) towards the CoE. It is expressed through initiatives aimed at enhancing the CoE’s collective research performance, particularly in anticipation of competition for renewed excellence funding. This dynamic reveals that, for the CoE, citizenship and institutional competition are not oppositional but complementary, as collective engagement is mobilised in the service of competitive success.
  • ‘Collegial leadership adapting to multiple competitions’ highlights the plurality of leadership modes, each one responding to different levels and forms of competition. At the level of professors and decision-making processes at the top, traditional collegial governance is ‘overstretched’. Although professors retain full authority, they struggle to reach consensus and to lead these large multidisciplinary centres effectively. This suggests a growing demand for new skills more closely associated with the figure of an academic manager than a professor. The institutional race for excellence thus places considerable strain on collegial governance rooted in the chair-based system. Accordingly, ECRs describe different and, apparently, contradictory modes of collegial leadership. For example, the ‘laissez faire’ mode aligns with the ideals of freedom and autonomy underpinning intellectual collegiality, but also with competition among individuals. They also describe leadership as ‘impositions’, which, on the one hand, erodes trust in professors and decision-making, but, on the other hand, intersects with notions of citizenship that compel ECRs to accept decisions, even when imposed. Yet many ECRs value and expect a more ‘inclusive leadership’ that support the development of intellectual collegiality. Overall, the relationship between collegial leadership and competition is heterogeneous and adaptive, closely intertwined with the preceding dynamics.

How, then, can these dynamics be interpreted together? Overall, the findings suggest that differences between university models matter profoundly for collegiality. Expectations regarding how academics collaborate, participate in governance and decision-making processes and form intellectual communities are embedded in specific institutional contexts.

Regarding the relation between collegiality and competition, I suggest two contrasting interpretations. The first emphasises the flourishing of intellectual collegiality and the emergence of CoE citizenship, understood as a collective, multidisciplinary sense of belonging that is driven by – and complementary to – the institutional race for excellence. The second interpretation, however, views this flourishing as a temporal illusion. From this perspective, competition is omnipresent and stands in a fundamentally exclusionary relationship to collegiality: it threatens intellectual collaboration even when temporarily deactivated; it compels academics to engage in CoE-related work they may not intrinsically value; and it overstretches traditional forms of collegial leadership, promoting managerial modes that erode trust in both academic judgement and decision-making processes. Viewed in this light, competition ultimately poses a threat to collegiality. These rival interpretations may uneasily coexist, and the second one possibly predominates. More research is needed on how organisational contexts affect the relationship between collegiality and competition.

Lautaro Vilches is a researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin and a consultant in higher education. His current research examines the implications of excellence schemes for transforming universities’ organisational arrangements and their effects on academic practices such as collegiality, academic mobility and research collaboration, particularly in the Social Sciences and Humanities. As a consultant he advises universities on advancing strategic change.


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Generous scholarship: a vision for academic life

by Ruth McQuirter Scott, Dragana Martinovic, Snežana Obradović-Ratković and Michelle K McGinn

The life of a scholar is often portrayed in popular culture as one of lonely struggle and pressure. It starts at the postgraduate level, when students work to meet the expectations of their programs and supervisors, jumping one hurdle after another until they complete their studies. If they are fortunate enough to land an increasingly rare full-time academic position, they discover a new set of expectations to fulfill. In application and renewal processes, most universities favour single-authored publications in tier-one journals, along with a research record that shows how the scholar is carving out a unique niche in their respective field. This portrayal of academic life is supported by studies that report pressure to publish, competition, isolation, and managerial influences on academic work (eg Castro-Ceacero and Ion, 2018; Dakka and Wade, 2019; Kyvik and Aksnes, 2015; McCarthy and Dragouni, 2020).

We believe there is a better way of living as academics, one that nurtures the strengths of colleagues and leads to mutual growth for novice and seasoned scholars.

Our group of four academics from two Canadian universities has been collaborating as writers for over 10 years. We represent a variety of roles in academia: professors, a research officer, and a university senior administrator. Since 2007 (until interrupted by the pandemic), we have facilitated residential academic writing retreats, bringing together new and experienced academics, postgraduate students, and outside experts for a week-long writing experience in a rural setting.

At our first writing retreat, we were introduced to the term “generous scholarship” as proposed by Constance Russell (2006). We were intrigued and excited by this term, which we felt captured a central component of the writing retreat and resonated with our approach to scholarly life. Sally Stewart Knowles, a retreat co-facilitator from Australia, was also inspired by the conversation at that 2007 retreat to argue that residential writing retreats foster generous scholarship (Knowles, 2017). Although neither Russell (2006) nor Knowles (2017) provides a clear definition of generous scholarship, we continued to be enticed by the term’s potential. This emerging concept seemed to suggest an intentional, collegial approach to scholarly endeavours that departs from the market-driven, individualistic view of scholarship so commonly present in academia.

To understand what generous scholarship could mean, we systematically examined these and other publications in which “generosity” was mentioned in the context of academia and elicited five key principles that characterize generous scholarship: social praxis, reciprocity, generous mindedness, generous heartedness, and agency.

To illustrate these five principles of generous scholarship, we use the example of our residential academic writing retreats. We provide a short overview of our writing retreat structure, define the five principles, and discuss the ways in which retreat participants enact these principles.

Writing Retreat Structure

Inspired by Barbara Grant’s (2008) model of residential academic writing retreats, our retreats consist of five days dedicated to individual writing projects, workshops, work-in-progress groups, and one-on-one consultations with shared meals and informal gatherings in a natural environment. Although most of the days are spent writing, we carve out time for discussions, reviewing each other’s work, and socializing. Accountability and on-site collegial support are embedded in the retreat structure, which promotes writing process and productivity, fosters learning with and from others, and builds a community (McGinn et al, 2019; Ratković et al, 2019).

Principles of Generous Scholarship

The five working principles frame generous scholarship as intentional, reflective, and collegial academic praxis.

Social praxis. Generous scholarship emerges within collaborative and collegial communities of scholarly practice. Our writing retreats enable participants to live and work together in a shared space. A sense of community is built through scheduled work-in-progress groups and workshops as well as meals, informal conversations, and walks in nature. Many new connections, relationships, and collaborative research and writing teams are established as people meet colleagues at various career stages and from different disciplines, departments, and institutions.

Reciprocity. Interrelations within generous scholarship are based on reciprocity through peer-to-peer learning and non-hierarchical mentoring. A key component of our writing retreats is the work-in-progress groups that meet each evening to present and respond to written work. The groups are mixed in terms of fields of expertise, academic roles, and career stages to provide multiple perspectives and rich discussions. When a writer’s work is being featured, another participant acts as a note taker, enabling the writer to focus on comments and suggestions from the others. Participants take turns over subsequent evenings, with each participant serving as writer, contributor, and note taker. The participatory and interactive workshops provide further evidence of reciprocity in action as participants exchange ideas, knowledge, and experiences.

Generous mindedness. Generous scholarship involves acknowledging other people’s situations or perspectives and committing cognitive resources to advance those individuals and their scholarly work. The workshops during our writing retreats foster generous mindedness as workshop facilitators and participants draw from their varied backgrounds and disciplines to inspire and inform each other’s academic practice. During work-in progress groups, writers are asked what type of feedback they wish to receive. Readers are asked to focus on specific aspects of the draft, or to respond to the overall piece. This practice helps readers to focus their responses and to make their feedback meaningful.

Generous heartedness. Generous scholarship requires empathy and emotional support for others. Generous heartedness has been a key feature of our writing retreats. We are open to adapting workshop content and the retreat structure to the needs of participants, and are flexible in expectations (eg participants spend parts of each day in ways that they deem most useful: reading, resting, or taking walks in nature). Emphasis is placed upon the importance of careful listening and attending to the emotional needs of writers as they share unfinished work during work-in-progress groups. A generous spirit is also fostered among participants through communal meals, informal walks, and evening activities.

Agency. Generous scholarship involves deliberately choosing and taking action to contribute to the scholarly community, the field, and society. It demands consciously embracing and modelling all the principles of generous scholarship. As organisers, we use our agency to structure and facilitate the writing retreats. We also engage as writers and participate in all workshops and work-in-progress groups. Many retreat participants demonstrate their commitment to generous scholarship by returning year after year to this community of scholars. Participants often report creating their own writing groups and retreats. Some have published scholarly work about writing retreats (Winters et al, 2019).

Conclusion

We acknowledge that following the principles of generous scholarship may challenge institutional structures that reward individualistic, competitive approaches; it can be difficult to navigate the logistical and human factors inherent in building a community of scholars. Our own writing retreats face an annual financial challenge, as we must repeatedly convince internal funding providers of their value. However, we are determined to overcome such barriers to enact and enable generous scholarship, and we look forward to returning to our residential writing retreats when pandemic restrictions allow. We have also found that following the principles of generous scholarship enhances, rather than undermines, academic productivity and personal satisfaction (Ratković et al, 2019). Furthermore, we are encouraged by the structures recently built into academia that might provide opportunities and spaces for enacting generous scholarship, such as open-access publishing and knowledge mobilization.

We invite you to consider generous scholarship in your own academic life and to share with SRHE blog readers examples of generous scholarship already present in your practice.

Ruth McQuirter Scott is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University, Ontario, Canada, where she is Assistant Director of Teacher Education and teaches Junior/Intermediate Language Arts. Ruth’s research interests are in the effective infusion of technology in education. Connect via rmcquirter@brocku.ca or on Twitter @wordstudy

Dragana Martinovic is a Professor at University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and a Fields Institute Fellow. In her research, Dragana explores knowledge for teaching mathematics, ways in which technology can assist in teaching and learning of mathematics, and epistemologies of STEM disciplines in relation to teacher and K–12 education. Connect via dragana@uwindsor.ca

Snežana Obradović-Ratković is Research Officer and Instructor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University, Ontario, Canada. Her research interests include migration, indigeneity, and reconciliation; transnational teacher education; research education; decolonizing arts-based methodologies; mindfulness and well-being in higher education; academic writing and publishing; and generous scholarship. Connect via sratkovic@brocku.ca

Michelle K McGinn is Associate Vice-President Research and Professor of Education at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Her primary interests include research collaboration, researcher development, scholarly writing, and ethics in academic practice. She is a co-investigator for Academic Researchers in Challenging Times. Connect via Twitter @dr_mkmcginn or mmcginn@brocku.ca

References

Grant, B (2008) Academic writing retreats: A facilitator’s guide. Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia

Knowles, SS (2017) ‘Communities practising generous scholarship: Cultures of collegiality in academic writing retreats’ in McDonald, J and Cater-Steel, A (eds), Implementing communities of practice in higher education (pp 53–80) Springer

McGinn, MK, Ratković, S, Martinovic, D, and McQuirter Scott, R (2019) ‘Creating and sustaining a community of academic writing practice: The multi-university residential academic writing retreat model’ in Simmons, N and Singh, A (eds) Critical collaborative communities: Academic writing partnerships, groups, and retreats (pp 136–148) Brill/Sense

Winters, K-L, Wiebe, N, and Saudelli, MG (2019) ‘Writing about writing: Collaborative writing and photographic analyses from an academic writing retreat’ in Simmons, N and Singh, A (eds), Critical collaborative communities: Academic writing partnerships, groups, and retreats (pp 149–168) Brill/Sense.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Jeanne Adèle Kentel for first introducing us to Russell’s (2006) use of the term “generous scholarship.” We extend our thanks to the many colleagues who have practised generous scholarship alongside us during the writing retreats and in other academic spaces. Details about our analysis process and an elaborated discussion of the principles of generous scholarship are presented in a paper currently under review for publication. Authorship of this blog and the associated paper has been shared equally.


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Exploring notions of ‘good’ academic leadership in challenging times

by Alan Floyd

Due to the nature of academic work it is accepted that leaders cannot be effective without the support of their departmental colleagues. Consequently, academic leadership is seen as more of a collective responsibility. Arguably, ‘distributing’ and sharing leadership is even more important in universities than in other organisations as academics are well educated, largely autonomous, and trained to be highly critical, so are more likely to oppose and challenge traditional leadership models and behaviours and may need a subtler form of leadership than other occupational groups. This perceived shift in leadership power, moving from people in formal positions to the whole academic body, is important for universities as it has been shown that the leadership activity of academics outside formal leadership roles can be very influential in effecting organizational change. Such a power shift may also allow academics to discuss and decide on leadership issues in a more collegial manner, a practice more in line with the shared value systems of the academy. But what are academics’ expressed notions of ‘good’ leadership within this context?  This blog explores these issues by drawing on data from research that has explored more flexible ‘distributed’ and ‘collaborative’ models of leadership, crucially focusing on data from both leaders and the led (see Floyd, 2019; Floyd and Fung, 2017; Floyd and Fung, 2018).

From this work, it appears that academics construct ‘good’ leadership predominantly in terms of understanding and supporting others, empathy, the ability both to act with integrity and as a role model, and the willingness to engage in genuine dialogue.  Academics apparently want to see in their leaders all of these personal qualities and knowledge and understanding of the whole ecosystem of higher education and the ability to make tough decisions to make that successful when needed.

The data suggest that academics understand the need for strong academic leadership in the current higher education landscape and there is a lot of empathy for the complexities of leadership practice in these turbulent times. In addition, academics are clear that individuals cannot just ‘plough their own furrow’ without considering the overall needs of the department or institution overall. Thus, academic leadership was seen as being a collective act (Bolden et al, 2009). Shared understandings of good academic leadership included words like ‘respect’, ‘feeling valued’, ‘fairness’, ‘being realistic’, and being ‘open’ and ‘communicative’. In relation to distributed leadership practice then, it seems that academics are happy to work with leaders in achieving shared institutional goals as long as they perceive the decisions taken to be in the best interests of the group, that all people involved (those whose roles are teaching-focused as well as those who are research-focused) are treated fairly and with respect, and that leaders show effective communicate skills and engage in genuine dialogue with academics rather than just transmitting information.

In their personal accounts about the characteristics of ‘good’ academic leadership, some leaders stress the importance of having the right set of skills, while others emphasize a set of underpinning values. There is some difference in emphasis between those whose roles are predominantly focused on research and those whose main focus is student education, but interviewees typically construct a sense of needing to respect both research and teaching as vital strands of academic practice. Most also see academic leadership as necessarily negotiating the sometimes-differing needs of the institution itself and the individuals being led.

There were many similarities in our findings between the two groups. For example, from the leaders’ point of view, good academic leadership was characterised by holding ‘shared underpinning values’, ‘good listening and communication skills’, being ‘understanding’, ‘supportive’, and ‘even handed’, and ‘human’ in their relationships with academic staff.  There also appeared to be a shared understanding from both groups of the need and difficulty in ‘balancing’ institutional and individual needs.

One key theme that emerged from our data was the perceived need for appropriate career support from leaders in relation to academics’ chosen career paths. This finding suggests that the focus of development training and support activities for academics who take on leadership roles may need to be widened from traditional activities (for example, linked to managing conflict and finance) to include more discussions on individual staff development needs. Such a finding reflects the move towards more portfolio based careers for academics, with career development responsibility seemingly shifting from the institution to the individual (Floyd, 2012), and an accompanying shift in associated developmental needs for academic leaders (Floyd, 2016). More fundamentally, it also suggests the need for academic work, including research and education, to be seen as a scholarly whole (Fung, 2016), and for university leadership to be seen as a special form of academic endeavour directed at strengthening the synergies between these different areas – for the good of both the individuals themselves and their institutions. The tensions between what is deemed good for the individuals (both leaders and those who are led) and what is good for the institution lie at the heart of the challenge, and our data suggest that all parties appreciate explicit discussion about these tensions, so that shared solutions and indeed shared values and goals can be developed.

Acknowledgments

The research on which this blog is based was funded by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and undertaken with Professor Dilly Fung. I gratefully acknowledge their support. Interpretations and errors remain my own.

SRHE member Alan Floyd is Professor of Education at the University of Reading where he is also the EdD Programme Director.

References

Bolden, R, Petrov, G and Gosling, J (2009) ‘Distributed leadership in higher education: rhetoric and reality’ Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 37(2): 257-277

Floyd, A (2012) ”Turning points’: the personal and professional circumstances that lead academics to become middle managers’ Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 40(2): 272-284

Floyd, A (2016) ‘Supporting academic middle managers in higher education: do we care?’ Higher Education Policy, 29(2): 167-183

Floyd, A (2019) ‘Investigating the PDR process in a UK university: continuing professional development or performativity?’ Professional Development in Education, 1-15

Floyd, A, and Fung, D (2017) ‘Focusing the kaleidoscope: exploring distributed leadership in an English university’ Studies in Higher Education, 42(8): 1488-1503

Floyd, A, and Fung, D (2018) ‘Stories of leading and being led: developing collaborative relationships in an English research-intensive university’ in Gornall, L, Thomas, B and Sweetman, L (eds), Exploring consensual leadership in higher education London: Bloomsbury Academic

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Ian Mc Nay


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Lessons for HE leaders from recent events

By Ian McNay

This is a longer piece than usual, an essay on leadership in HE, triggered by reflections on recent events and the lessons they offer. Turbulence in political leadership has been rife in the last six months from Italy to Gambia and New Zealand; UK and USA; the Labour Party, the Conservatives, UKIP; even the Open University. Which bridges to the first of five lessons to be drawn for HE leaders.

Lesson 1: listen to those you lead

If not, they will leave you – you risk losing their support, as in the OU, their loyalty, their commitment, even their compliance. Alternative leaders will spring up. I had hoped that the discourse about ‘disconnected’ might shift after the referendum vote. That showed that it was not the underclass who had disconnected from reality, but the political class whose bubble had floated off in to some cloud cuckoo land far from the reality of ‘others’ in those parts of Britain similar to my roots, on Teesside. It could have been Ashington, Scunthorpe, Motherwell, the Welsh valleys – alien places the perceivedly posh politicians do not go to and of which they have no understanding. But, after the shock wore off, the liberal elite, with its high proportion of graduates, returned to blaming the disenchanted – Hillary Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ – for their ignorance or even lack of gratitude for what the EU/Obama had done for them. As with the rust belt in the USA, the view was that, to quote Shirley Maclaine in Sweet Charity, ‘there’s got to be something better than this’. Or even, ‘it can’t get any worse, and voting to continue means more of the same old, same old, which has done nothing for us’. So, change, any change, was seen as worth the risk, even if its proponents were lying clowns. What does that say about their views of the incumbent leaders? Continue reading →