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Society now expects the universities it funds to work with citizens and communities to enable them to flourish in sustainable ways. One particular aspect of this concerns support for small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) which, more than ever, need universities to help them cost effectively be innovative, and at the leading edge, for markets which are now global in outreach. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the kinds of approach and leadership that academics must put into their academic practices, in order to creatively and constructively lead local partnerships – partnerships that will be both successful and sustainable.

In total, 185 rigorous cases studies were undertaken of successful university outreach activity in 30 universities across Europe. Senior staff of those universities used their collective judgment to determine the 16 “best leaders” of these projects in terms of entrepreneurial skills and wealth‐creating impacts. These leaders were then thematically interviewed and videoed, and their immediate staff indicated what leadership characteristics best described them. All data were content analysed. Then the best practice approaches, which actually helped SMEs, were elicited and the qualities of the 16 leaders were revealed.

Best practice projects, from all studied, clearly showed a “virtuous knowledge sharing” cycle, where holistic and co‐creating inter‐disciplinary team‐working was the norm. Teams of academics and SME partners in these projects worked extremely closely together to co‐produce “real world” solutions. While often “reluctant leaders”, the academics who normally drove these entrepreneurial projects to success had all of the characteristics often ascribed to leaders, as described in the general leadership literature. However, in the case of these university reach‐out leaders, these entrepreneurial academics had a particular focus in striving to be “democratically empowering”; their aspiration was to ensure innovative skills were successfully passed onto others in their teams, including their external partners, to enable powerful and collective co‐creation.

This paper has profound social implications, especially in our present global financial extreme, as it focuses on the kinds of leadership that academics should put into practice in order to work more creatively and effectively with local SME partnerships. The approach has also shown how such leadership can also lead to successful social enterprises in their own right.

The working of universities with SMEs is very much a Cinderella area in higher education research. The approach described in this paper deals with this topic in an evidential and highly innovative way. It uniquely heralds, and describes in some detail, a new kind of university which strives to co‐identify problems worthy of exploration with local partners, the kind of co‐learning that engenders co‐creation and co‐design, and also the co‐production with local SMEs that can lead them to survive and to flourish. This has recently been recognized by the PASCAL International Observatory for place management, social capital and learning regions, which has adopted the approach in its “Universities for a Modern Renaissance programme”.

Superior leadership in higher education makes the difference between institutions that merely survive and those that can truly thrive in today's complex environment. At this time of significant transformation in higher education, academic leaders face intensifying institutional, environmental, and societal challenges, yet colleges and universities often devote limited attention to integrating their approaches to the selection, development, evaluation, and recognition of leaders. Moreover, traditional approaches and criteria used in the selection of academic leaders are often inadequate for predicting their success. Through the process of organizational and leader profiling, as described in this chapter, institutions can better understand the landscape in which the leader will be functioning, providing a more contextualized and useful approach to leader selection, development, evaluation, and recognition.

The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused significant disruptions to academic activities in educational institutions across countries of the world. In the context of transnational higher education (TNHE), the pandemic has led to major shifts in face-to-face teaching and learning, students’ support services and student engagement. While a number of scholarly studies have examined the effect of the pandemic on education provision across different educational levels, not much has been done to address existing gaps in how academic leaders could support the transformation of the TNHE sector to respond to current disruptions. In order to address these gaps, the current study adopts a case study approach to examine the complex and evolving academic leadership roles in TNHE institutions in Ghana with respect to remote teaching and learning and virtual team activities. The current study addresses the following questions: What academic leadership approaches are essential to developing innovative practices in host TNHE in order to meet the learning needs of students during and after the pandemic? How can transformational leadership approaches interface with institutional theory to provide new direction for transforming TNHE during and after the pandemic? How can academic leadership roles support the transformation of TNHE during and after the COVID-19 pandemic? As a major contribution for addressing gaps in academic leadership roles in TNHE environments especially during COVID-19, the current study proposes an eight-component transformation model. The study concludes by arguing that the challenges facing TNHE especially during the current period of disruptions will require a transformative and innovative academic leadership approach that would ensure that education delivery addresses current and future students’ learning needs.

The main purpose is to analyse the effect of academic leadership competencies (LCs) on student learning outcomes (SLOs) in terms of cognitive, skill and affective aspects.

The study utilised quantitative research that focussed on correlation design by randomly distributing questionnaires containing 53 items to a total of 496 faculty members in Saudi Arabia public higher education institutions (HEIs). The data was analysed using SPSS (V.24) and SEM-AMOS.

Results show a direct and significant effect of academic LC on students' cognitive, skill and affective learning outcomes in public HEIs.

The main limitation was that the participants of public HEIs were from Saudi Arabia. However, the findings have provided valuable understandings and a comprehensive conclusion about the impact of academic LC on SLOs in terms of cognitive, skill and affective aspects. The study recommended that different LC should be further developed. Future studies proposed to investigate the factors that support academic leaders to affect SLOs directly in HEIs.

The findings contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the significant and direct effect of academic LC on SLOs in HEIs. The findings have the potential to reflect positively on the academic leaders in public HEIs. The findings act as a guide for HEIs in terms of the importance of academic LC for having desirable SLOs. This study is crucial for educational policymakers and practitioners of academic leadership as the academic leaders' effort will greatly contribute to the HEIs as well as the nation's development in general.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge on the slow gender change in academia by examining university leaders’ defensive patterns of responses to feminist knowledge. Identifying the most common responses will enable scholars and practitioners engaged in equality work in academia to anticipate them and implement specialized interventions to target these arguments.

The author developed a reflexive, composite methodology, combining participatory action research, documentary analysis and auto-ethnography. It is an explorative study, based on author’s own interpretations and experiences while talking about gender inequality issues in the academic setting. Data are drawn from discussions stemming from public lectures and encounters in the academic setting where academic leaders were present between 2009 and 2015.

Three patterns of responses are identified: two defensive patterns and one which provides opportunities for change. The two defensive responses resisted the feminist knowledge on the basis of methodology/epistemology or the study’s findings. The pattern of commitment shows promising opportunities for change.

For future research, it could be interesting to further explore the role of leaders in gender equality work. The author examines leaders who are gender aware and analyze how they champion gender equality in their organizations and what actions they take to increase equality. The actual leadership work that has to be done to create gender equal or inclusive work places is an under researched premise.

Hitherto, little is known about the way the feminist knowledge is received within in the academic community. This paper zooms in on this knowledge transfer and investigates a moment where feminist knowledge and academic leaders meet and learning opportunities occur. In addition, this paper shares the hard task we have as feminist scholars, and the feelings this brings to ones one identity as a scholar.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on major issues and trends of academic libraries and leadership in the changing nature of higher education. Changing environment of academic libraries has impacted significantly on the knowledge, skills requirement and role of the library leaders, and how organizations can maintain and manage the changing nature of academic libraries as well as leadership while effective leadership is extremely required for the library leaders and organizations are concern about future scenarios. The primary objective is to identify the key challenges in libraries, leadership skills and approaches of the leaders, their effective leadership traits and future perceptions are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to facilitate as how to develop effective and successful leadership for the academic libraries during the changing nature of higher education. The findings and recommendations in the paper are based on personal experience of leadership positions in an academic library as well as experience of library leaders across the world.

Academic libraries are facing similar challenges and issues across the world. This paper identifies that library leaders need to be effective communicators, strategic thinkers, visionary, and able to examine the new ways of working.

This paper discusses why academic library leaders need a set of new skills and how can they develop leadership skills and competencies in the changing nature of academic libraries.

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the adoption of transformational leadership qualities in South African libraries in Gauteng Province.

The study used a qualitative approach with open-ended questions that yielded some qualitative data. For the study, a multi-case study design was used. The study specifically targeted participants by identifying three directors of academic libraries in Gauteng. The criteria for selecting the three directors were that two of the universities are residential research-intensive universities, and the third is an academic library of a distance learning university. Atlas.ti8 was used to analyse the data, which was then presented using thematic content analysis.

Thematic areas for leaders of the 21st century, as mentioned by the directors, were a mixed bag. That empowerment was suggested by the first academic director. The appropriate leadership qualities were fiduciary, analytical, pragmatic, transformative and visionary. The second academic director proposed consultative, innovative and adaptable approaches, while the third proposed collaborative, ethical and adaptive approaches.

Transformative leadership is required, particularly in the aftermath of technological advances and pandemics such as COVID-19, which have altered the way academic libraries should operate.

Many studies on transformative leadership have been conducted. However, in the aftermath of technological advancements and pandemics such as COVID-19, the role of transformative leadership remained untested. This study fills the void.

This chapter offers a dynamic model of authentic leadership that links authentic leadership to situational leadership theory and shows how dynamics in the academic environment, one of the most difficult settings that leaders face, can be addressed. Kindsiko and Vadi detail the concept of situational authenticity, which reveals how authentic leadership takes place via forms of sensing – sense-giving, sense-making, sense-breaking and sense-keeping – in work-related situations. The authors highlight questions for future research: Is sensing the key to success? Are situational ethics valid if they adapt to evolving circumstances? Are situational ethics, in effect, just another way of expressing relativism? If so, can that be reconciled with authentic leadership theory?

Due to the many changes that have occurred over the last two decades, especially in connection with the ‘new managerialism’, academia is a complex working environment. Multiple skills are demanded from professors, such as acting as entrepreneurs and mentors with designated leadership competences. This paper investigates the leadership role of academic group leaders in the context of higher education in Germany. It is argued that a servant leadership approach can enable professors to provide effective academic leadership in the current university context. This is due to its strong human orientation and low power distance and its focus on facilitating academic excellence, creativity and innovation. The discussion notes the importance of developing academic group leaders and describes some practical means of implementing servant leadership in higher education.

Many academic leaders have little formal leadership training, which can result in challenges to effective leadership, succession planning and burnout. This paper aims to explore the leadership skills needed to be an effective senior academic leader in a Canadian medical faculty.

An anonymous voluntary survey of needed leadership skills and supports was sent to 60 senior academic leaders at the University of Alberta. This was followed by interviewing a purposive sample, using open-ended questions based on a multimodal needs assessment of senior academic leaders. The authors used an iterative process to analyze the data; anonymized transcripts were coded and categorized separately by two researchers, and themes were created.

The “ability to influence” was the highest rated needed leadership skill in the survey. The interviewed leaders (n = 12) were unanimous that they felt unprepared at the start of the leadership role. The survey and interviews identified five major themes for leadership skills: Mentoring, Finances, Human Resources, Building Relationships and Protected Time. Networking and leadership courses were identified as major sources of support.

Although a single site study, the results were similar to another large Canadian medical faculty (University of Toronto, Lieff et al., 2013). While the survey had a 42% response rate (25/60), the survey responses were echoed in the interviews. Although the purposive sample was small, the interviewed leaders were a representative sample of the larger leadership group.

Academic leaders may benefit from a mentorship team/community of leaders and specific university governance knowledge which may help their ability to influence and advance their strategic initiatives.