What style of leadership is best suited to direct organizational change to fuel institutional diversity in higher education?

Abstract

Implementing diversity agendas within decentralized, loosely coupled, and change-resistant institutions such as colleges and universities is a global challenge. A shift in the organizational climate and culture is imperative to produce the change needed in order for a diversity agenda to thrive. Higher education scholars have consistently identified leadership styles as being among the chief contributing factors to successful institutional change, especially as it relates to diversity agenda efforts. This chapter first reviews the literature on forms of diversity agenda, paradigms of change and leadership style and then synthesizes results from 10 cases on proven strategies and offers implications on how different leadership styles can be applied to fuel institutional diversity efforts.

Keywords:

• Diversity
• organizational
• leadership
• style
• higher education