Letter from the guest editors

This Special Issue Leading the Academy: Building capacity through distributed leadership explores collaborative approaches to leadership in higher education. The last 10 years have seen an increasing interest in distributed and shared approaches to leadership for higher education. The higher education sector, it is argued, has long understood the importance of valuing, trusting and encouraging widespread engagement in decision-making; however, the introduction of a more administrative management approach across the tertiary sector has resulted in collaboration being relegated as a low priority (Jones et al., 2014). A recent escalation of multiple challenges to the sector is reigniting interest in distributed approaches to leadership in which academics, administrative and professional staff collaborate to design new creative responses to develop agile and resilient educational institutions. This special issue has been developed as the guest editors hold a belief, supported by their research findings, that distributed leadership is an approach that offers a good fit for the organisational culture of the academy. It also offers a range of benefits such as sustainable outcomes and leadership capacity development (Jones et al., 2012). While acknowledging the established role of positional leadership for the higher education sector, it is a heartfelt aim that this special issue will stimulate thinking about the potential role that post leader-centric approaches, such as distributed leadership, can contribute to sector wide leadership capacity

The existing body of literature on distributed and shared leadership has largely focused on normative descriptions of the potential contribution of more engaged forms of leadership. However, while the need for movement to post-heroic leadership in the higher education sector has been argued and established (Bryman, 2009; Bolden et al., 2012; Davis & Jones, 2014; Gentle & Forman, 2014), if the sector is to remain agile and resilient, systemic change is needed. Yet there has been limited adoption of distributed, or collaborative, approaches with reasons suggested being the need for institutions to reconsider what is constituted as leadership and for individuals (particularly academics) to embrace more leadership responsibility. For this to happen, more research is needed to support the sector’s thinking and conceptualisation about leadership and to support individuals with how to embrace and enact distributed leadership.

This is the purpose for this special issue – to present theoretical and empirical examples of the use of a distributed leadership approach to bring about change (in this case to learning and teaching innovation). This issue also focuses on how action taken within the higher education sector can be assessed for its effectiveness in enabling a distributed leadership approach.

Opening with a theoretical discourse, the first paper (Jones & Harvey) raises the question of what change process is needed to achieve an individual mindset shift and institutional paradigm change to embrace distributed leadership? For a distributed leadership approach to offer value for supporting effective change for the higher education sector, a more inclusive, adaptive approach is needed to address ever-emergent complexities facing the sector. The significant change in thinking about leadership is recognised as a challenge for individuals and their institutions. To support individuals and institutions with thinking about, and moving towards, distributed leadership, a new change process model, synthesised and developed from a decade of research, is presented. This model stresses the actions needed to enable distributed leadership as well as the role of evaluation and reflection for good leadership.

The argument for the need for significant change in both individual and institutional discourse is then extended (Youngs), to suggest that, while distributed leadership and collaboration may overcome the dualism between professional and academic staff that has arisen from New Public Management, a more significant change is needed in the way in which sense is made in organisations. It is proposed that an ontological shift is needed that builds on the fabric of a leadership-as-practice approach by focusing beyond positions and beyond individuals and moving from a managerial to collegial lens. In so doing, the alternative ontology proposed recognises movement as a flow of practice produced and reproduced through moment-by-moment (short exchange) activities.

Moving from this conceptual discourse, the multi-authored articles of empirical examples of the use of a distributed leadership approach to implement change to learning and teaching include national, multi-institutional, institutional and disciplinary examples. The papers are presented in this order, from a macro- to a meso-level approach to distributed leadership. It is also instructive that a distributed leadership approach that engages many experts is itself symbolised by the multi-authorship of these contributions.

At a national, extending to international, level, a reflective review of distributed leadership within a professional recognition scheme for university educators is presented. The Australian National University Educational Fellowship Scheme, accredited by the UK Higher Education Academy to award fellowships, is the focus. Beckmann demonstrates how a distributed leadership approach can be used to support a professional learning path for academic and professional staff into leadership. The author argues that a distributed leadership approach, by challenging traditional boundaries and restrictions, opens opportunities for engaging and developing a diverse range of leaders and contributes to leadership capacity building at individual and institutional levels.

Next at a national and a disciplinary level, recognition by a number of academics from across Australian institutions of the need to refocus, redesign and redevelop approaches to the teaching of Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics saw the adoption of a more collaborative leadership approach. Sharma, Rifkin, and colleagues present an example of a distributed leadership approach used to establish and support a multi-institutional network of Science and Mathematics educators network across Australian higher education institutions. The distributed leadership approach encouraged, supported and sustained a network, by dispersed teams that engaged with local experts to implement action learning projects. These action learning project teams were supported by communities of practice with different forms of expertise, networking opportunities, leadership development workshops and critical friends. In their paper, these authors describe not only the dimensions of the project but also show how they used an action enabling framework to both assist the establishment and assess the effectiveness of actions taken to implement a distributed leadership approach.

The focus then moves to a multi-institutional level with an analysis of a project designed to implement a collaborative teaching quality development scheme – the Peer-Assisted Teaching Scheme. Carbone and colleagues describe the use of the benchmarking distributed leadership tool to analyse and assess the distributed leadership approach implemented at five Australian institutions. Each of the universities had enacted a Peer-Assisted Teaching Scheme and the evaluation affirmed an alignment between these schemes and a distributed leadership approach. This is a clear example of how distributed leadership can be embedded within learning and teaching initiatives at a multi-institutional level.

The special issue concludes with how distributed leadership has been effective in achieving change at the individual institution level. Three institutions are featured where distributed leadership was effective for learning and teaching initiatives, namely a polycentric law project (Bevaqua), a first year in higher education programme (McKenzie & Egea) and a sessional academic staff strategy (Hamilton). Each case example demonstrates how a distributed leadership approach can be evaluated for its short- and long-term impact, in addition to its output. It is argued that such measurement is gaining importance as universities move to focus on identifying more useful and robust means to demonstrate impact.

What is highlighted by both the conceptual discussion and the empirical examples in this Special Issue is that there is no single template for using a distributed leadership approach in higher education. Rather, the change process needs to be carefully designed and executed and as such is not a simple case of imposing a pattern upon an institution and its employees. This is an advantage given the diversity across the higher education sector. It is also, however, a challenge to existing perceptions, both individual and institutional leadership needs to be re-envisaged from a different perspective.

To encourage new perspectives on leadership, we conclude with the use of metaphor and imagery. Metaphors and imagery have been used to tap into the creative brain to explore new approaches in organisations (Morgan, 2006) and in higher education leadership (Alvesson & Spicer, 2011; Turnbull, 2006). The guest editors contend that metaphor offers a creative way to seek a new understanding of (distributed) leadership. In so doing, they adopt metaphors based in ideas from science fiction. By referencing science fiction, metaphor is not used in a ‘conventional’ way, but in an ‘imaginative and creative’ (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 139) manner to ‘give new understanding to a concept or experience’ (Skorobohacz, Billot, Murray, & Khong, 2016, p. 3).

A series of metaphors is presented, in chronological order of creation, to depict the phases of the paradigm change process that moves from a traditional, hierarchical and authoritarian approach to one of collaborative, shared and distributed leadership. Starting with the metaphor of the mythical and heroic Superman (Spengler & Donner, 1978), the authors argue the need to contest the traditional mindset of such heroic, charismatic leader to propose leadership as inclusive of collective expertise. Moving the metaphor to the ‘uncharted territory’ of outer space, one can make the analogy that the ‘uncharted territory’ is analogous to the multiple, and often unpredictable, pressures which are impacting higher education. The metaphor of Star Trek (Roddenberry & Daniels, 1966) recognises a more inclusive and collaborative leadership where multiple leaders on the Starship Enterprise (high-ranking officers on the ship’s bridge who see and steer outside the ship) work collaboratively as a team of experts, for example, Captain Kirk contributes traditional leadership qualities; First Officer Spock contributes wisdom [Vulcan]; McCoy contributes medical skills and perspective (Roberts & Ross, 1995). Yet, this collaboration still carries an assumption of positional leaders separated from the large number of internal experts who are left to work ‘below the bridge’ to defend the ship. Then to the range of experts and strengths (from charismatic leaders such as Obe-Wan Kanobi, Yoda, to experts and novices, such as Luke Skywalker and Rey) that together develop the powerful energy represented by the Force in Star Wars (Kurtz & Lucas, 1977-2015). Essential to the metaphor of using the ‘Force’ in conceptualising a paradigm shift to distributed leadership is that the ‘Force’ is accessible to, and could be used, by all. The ‘Force’ acknowledges that leadership capacity can be developed and enacted by all, recognising the opportunity to draw on the contributions of individual strengths.

Superman was a creation from another century and as such represents an old approach to leadership. Leadership for learning and teaching in higher education needs to progress towards more contemporary conceptualisations if the sector is to maintain and develop an agility that enables it to not only respond to external factors, but to proactively set and lead sectoral direction. Together the papers that contribute to this special issue showcase the synergetic outcomes achieved when distributed leadership underpins learning and teaching innovations. Impact is heightened as, not only is leadership capacity increased, but concurrently learning and teaching initiatives are advanced. Distributed leadership is offered as the ‘Force’ for the future.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.