The drivers of Higher Education leadership competence: a study of Moldovan HEI’s

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the qualities and skills needed by leaders and managers in Higher Education; the extent to which leaders and managers in 15 Moldovan Institutions perceive themselves to hold those qualities and skills; and the main drivers for holding higher levels of them. Review of the literature suggests that the qualities and skills examined belong to nine domains. The leaders and managers perceive themselves to be strongest on the Personal Values domain and weakest on Managing Resources. Where respondents have moved to the action stage of learning, perceive their organisation to be supportive of development, and have access to a broader range of development activities they are more likely to report higher levels of competence on the qualities and skills. The paper concludes that where institutions want to develop leadership and management capacity they need to help leaders and managers to psychologically commit to acting on their development needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership
• competence
• action
• organisational support

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

David Dawson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4994-6169

John Hepworth https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7121-719X

Larisa Bugaian https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4478-5124

Notes

1 The online survey tool used only provides researchers with access to data for respondents who have completed the survey in full. Inspection of the responses showed no evidence of respondent unreliability leading to a 100% usage rate.

2 This three items were each positively phrased and reverse scored.