The influence of universities’ organizational features on professorial intellectual leadership

Abstract

This research examines the intellectual leadership behaviours of senior academics at professoriate level, and the influences of institutional support practices, climate and communication in universities as main organizational features on these behaviours. To explore relations among research variables, qualitative data were collected by interviews with Australian senior academics, and analysed by using content and descriptive analysis techniques. According to senior academics, major professorial leadership behaviours are creating new knowledge, keeping up standards in disciplinary publications, helping younger researchers’ academic development, obtaining competitive grants, raising the reputation of their institutions and using their expertize to influence public debates. In addition, senior academics confirmed that institutional resources contribute generally to their productivity within scholarly leadership, and organizational climate strongly affects their motivation and academic performance. Furthermore, they affirmed that organizational communication has greater impact on their intellectual leadership by its reflections on climate and institutional facilities in universities than its direct effects.

Keywords:

• professoriate
• intellectual leadership
• organizational communication
• organizational climate
• institutional support practices

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Dr Marie McInnes, The University of Sydney, for her contributions during the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Baris Uslu http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5941-1507

Additional information

Funding

The first author's overseas visit was supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) with Reference No: B.14.2.TBT.0.06.01-214-6041.