Reframing Academic Leadership by Haitian Sun

Currently, higher education is performing multi tasks for the development of a nation. It prepares and trains the work force for the 21st century. Higher education has broaden the fields of knowledge due to which different changes are occurring in every field of life as well as in the field of higher education and invites the academic leaders to integrate these changes and innovations for effective working in the global age. Academic leaders in higher education had to make decisions and to act quickly how were they to manage large educational communities, addressing students', teachers’, and staff's needs, as well as society's needs. Thinking ahead, this pandemic period could be the restart button that higher education needs. It might be an opportunity for universities to recalibrate their organizations and to build a more efficient, accessible, and adapted set of offerings to the knowledge-based society in the post-pandemic world of work. Therefore, the main goal universities should assume is to be ready to increase their community impact in a competitive environment.

This book explores the complex factors that stimulus the real and perceived effectiveness of academic leaders. Academic leadership development has recently emerged as an important area of research considering the varying role of academic leaders in managing universities in terms of the promotion of teaching, learning, research, and technology. This has attracted the researchers but remained mostly confined to the developed countries. Yet the landscape of the public and private universities across the globe has been changing due to expansion and new higher education policies. This has revealed the need on the part of universities to think about professional development of the bureaucratic nature of professors to assume leadership roles. In the process of designing future universities, academic leaders will play an essential role. Given the increased complexity and diversity of situations that require immediate solutions, academic leaders will be making innovative decisions and responding to the needs. In the middle of such an acute crisis as the COVID-19 pandemic, the leaders act under high psychological pressure, with great expectations from members of various organizations for constant reassurance and support. Moreover, the pressure of time, ambiguity, the lack of information, and high level of stress, all increase the difficulty of the decision-making process. In this context, a wise leadership can help the organization become antifragile and resilient, developing in the middle of a crisis through creative thinking, learning fast from experience of and adapting to the crisis, and through decentralized decision-making processes. This book will be an invaluable resource for campus leaders working together on significant reform.