Leadership

Leadership within a university setting has traditionally been based on subject expertise. This has afforded individual departments and units a high degree of autonomy in how they operate.  The advent of new technologies, has, however, brought the aspect of change management in leadership into focus.  To successfully oversee large-scale transition, institutional leaders must be equipped to manage the needs and expectations of the immediate community (staff and students) while optimising relationships with policymakers, national ministries, industry partners, peer institutions and other operators in the digital ecosystem. There is little doubt that leaders need to evolve their skillset to guide institutions through major change processes, but the move to professionalise university leadership brings its own challenges. What does successful contemporary leadership look like? And how can hiring practices and professional development programmes ensure that candidates are selected to bring benefit to the institution, the sector and society more broadly?

As university missions and mandates multiply, leaderships styles tend to diverge. Ideals such as transformational rather than transactional leadership gain traction with emphasis on building institutional capacity and resilience through futures-thinking or effectuation exercises. Value-based leadership, on the other hand, prioritises qualities such as empowerment, purposefulness and caring as means of building leadership capacity across the various functions and strata of university operations.

A broad move towards more democratic rather than top-down leadership is becoming apparent in institutional responses to advancements in the digital sphere. Navigating the largely unknown potential of digital technologies has brought about a certain acceptance of co-learning (as opposed to one-directional instruction) among students, academic staff and university administrators. This idea is reflected in the more consultative approach to developing institutional policies on digitalisation and, in many cases, it has manifested in the devolution of responsibility to cross-institutional bodies committed to advancing the ethical dimensions of the transition. This is illustrated by the central place occupied by the Digital Council, an interdisciplinary expert body that provides strategic advice to management at Zurich University of the Arts in Switzerland.

The benefits of grassroots-led transformation and bottom-up information flow are recognised as fundamental to pursuing people-centred transformation, in which staff, students, and leadership view themselves as stakeholders in the process. But this more democratic, consultative approach does not preclude the need for strong leadership. Implementation of complex IT projects in large-scale transformation requires robust governance, tight management and thorough financial oversight of change processes – all key elements of the leadership portfolio.

Institutional culture sets the context within which a university can transition.  Bringing about a cultural change requires an innovative, adaptive mindset that permeates leadership strata and extends to the various cohorts of university constituents. As evidenced by findings in the DIGI-HE project, responsibility for shaping new learning cultures does not stop with senior management; instead, it requires a commitment to a more distributed approach to institutional leadership.  To trigger this cultural shift and champion institutional transformation among the wider university community, do leaders and senior management first need to commit to building their own digital competences?

Research published in a USTREAM project report showed that to promote change, leaders must have access to the capabilities and tools needed to achieve success. This suggests that senior managers should invest in their own digital competences, signalling a commitment to the transformation process. Notably, and perhaps precipitated by an absence of formal leadership development programmes, some universities have been sufficiently innovative to develop home-grown solutions which strengthen digital competences among leadership. The Digital Confidence for Leadership training programme implemented at Zurich University of the Arts is one such example.

So, while there is apparent merit in the more bottom-up models of transformation that continue to gain traction, this does not (and should not) preclude leadership from improving their own digital literacy. Indeed, university leadership beyond those with specific responsibilities for the digital portfolio must, increasingly, take decisions that require some technical understanding. Decisions relating to technical solutions have wider strategic implications regarding, for example, the use of data in university management, the need for interoperability between services and units, or policies regarding data ownership and digital sovereignty. Moreover, transformation championed by top leadership often has the benefit of generating buy-in among the wider university community. Indeed, according to USTREAM project findings, empowering communities is essential for capacity-building at both individual and institutional levels and a pre-requisite for effective and successful change management at universities.

This combination of a learner mindset among top leadership and the capacity to enable community engagement in the process are cited in an interview with University of Limerick President, Kerstin Mey, as essential skills in tackling large-scale transformation. The permeation of a digital mindset through all levels of leadership cultivates an acceptance of, and appetite for, integrating technologies in everyday practices. It encourages experimentation and resourcefulness among users, generating a sense of confidence, ownership and leadership capacity among cohorts of the university community.

The pandemic called attention to what IT professionals in higher education have long argued – digitalisation touches everything. It goes far beyond the integration of new technologies in teaching and learning and, in fact, has the potential to enhance services and university operations more broadly. The accelerated move to remote operations as the pandemic hit in 2020 revealed considerable gaps in digital competences and weaknesses in institutional management. What is more, results of a 2022 EUA survey on universities and innovation found there was need for a more nuanced understanding of digital capacity building within institutions, given challenges associations with funding for technology integration and uptake of digital skills among university staff.

From this emerged a swell of opinions as to how digitalisation should look beyond the scope of learning and teaching and, instead, be embedded as a transversal topic in strategic planning and everyday practices. Digitalisation was no longer perceived as exclusively the domain of the ‘techies’. Rather, it was recognised as a cross-cutting issue of strategic importance. IT Directors, Chief Information Officers and Knowledge Transfer managers quickly began to occupy a more prominent place at leadership tables.

What’s more, universities’ vulnerability in the face of cyberattacks, coupled with a realisation among university leaders of the potential of digital initiatives in driving change management, underlined the urgency in investing in technical expertise as a means of strengthening institutional resilience and responsiveness.

As found in Universities without walls – a vision for 2030, professionalisation of staff in all areas of university management is essential in the implementation of institutional strategy. Professionalising the digital portfolio is no exception. And in the face of mounting competition for talent from private industry, the expertise of IT professionals is increasingly valued as fundamental to guiding institutional transformation. Platforms for peer exchange such as EUNIS are responding to the appetite for practice sharing among higher education IT professionals and are fast becoming integral to exploring common solutions for tackling cybersecurity threats, ensuring compliance with regulatory frameworks and building interoperability.

An absence of an overarching vision has, historically, tainted digitalisation initiatives. Top-down decisions – often based on the misconception that digitalisation reduces costs – have been misguided; poor implementation has coloured the wider endeavour and resulted in a loss of trust in the process. Fortunately, the narrative has begun to shift with the realisation that digitalisation is not a quick-fix solution to reduce costs but instead, it is a process requiring long term investment to enhance and improve processes.

Patterns emerging from a fast-changing landscape will invariably impact the role of university leaders. Widespread mergers, the proliferation of European University alliances, a complex regulatory environment and emerging skills gaps will continue to present challenges and opportunities. Adapting to new rhythms and adjusting behaviours takes time. But staff and student communities, like their leaders, are not inherently resistant to change. Rather, they respond positively when granted collective ownership of advancing change processes and when given space to invest in their digital upskilling. What is certain is that as the pace of advancement accelerates, flexibility and adaptability – and importantly, the ability to cultivate these qualities institution-wide – will fast become the true test of a leader.