Perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness within higher education in France

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in many countries are currently experiencing significant changes in how they are organized and managed. Consequently, exploring the kind of manager/leader behaviours that are perceived as effective and least effective/ineffective by peers, subordinates, collaborators, and team members in HEIs becomes important. Choosing a French HEI for our study and using the Critical Incident Technique, the authors conducted 37 interviews of academic/non-academic managerial/non-managerial staff to generate a total of 250 critical incidents (CIs) of observed managerial behaviour. Subjecting these CIs to open and axial coding resulted in the emergence of 17 positive and 21 negative behavioural indicators of perceived managerial and leadership effectiveness. Comparing these findings with those of extant studies of HEIs from Anglo countries revealed many similarities and considerable differences. Implications are offered for leadership and management development training programmes specifically designed for members of HEIs, along with suggestions for further research on this topic.

Keywords:

• management
• leadership
• management development
• organizational behaviour
• qualitative research

Notes

1 Former polytechnics and colleges that came into the university sector after 1992.

2 Ronen and Shenkar (1985) classified only European countries into different clusters. For these scholars, the Anglo cluster included Ireland and the UK. However, because Australia and the USA share with these two countries a common language and more or less similar religious orientations, for the purpose of our study we have included them in the ‘Anglo’ cluster, despite their lack of geographic proximity.