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A law school dean must develop an awareness of himself before attempting to lead the school and demonstrate an awareness of his faculty to the importance of the law school. If his faculty perceives him to be competent as a leader he will be better able to administer the law school. Increasing the frequency and intimacy of contact with faculty members will bolster the perceptions among the faculty of his leader behaviour. A study of how differently law schools and their faculties perceive the leader behaviour of deans and to what degree social distance relates to law school deans' leader behaviour as perceived by themselves and their faculties shows a significant difference between the leader behaviour of law school deans as self‐perceived and perceived by their faculties. As deans inter‐related more frequently in a meaningful way the faculties tended to view their deans as exhibiting more leader behaviour. Eighty‐one deans and 1,001 faculty members from 81 law schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia participated in the study between 1981 and 1982.

Understanding one’s personal journey provides for effective learning, growth, and development (Madsen, 2010). Reflection on the influences and experiences of successful women leaders is essential to understanding the factors that have enabled them to obtain and sustain leadership positions in nontraditional career fields. The purpose of this qualitative study was to conceptualize and describe the personal journeys of women who became deans of agriculture. The central research question was, “Describe your personal journey to becoming a dean of agriculture?” Six women deans of agriculture were interviewed and observed in an attempt to recognize the impact their personal journeys have had in developing their leadership styles and sustaining their leadership role. Conclusions were (a) they were first born children, (b) influenced by parental qualities and spousal support, and (c) mentors recognized their gifts and talents and encouraged them to pursue advanced degrees and leadership positions.

The goal of this paper is to identify the attitudes of the chairs of library and information science (LIS) programs in Chinese universities toward the iSchools movement.

The authors collected data from 36 deans or other chairs of LIS by using open‐ended questionnaire and utilized grounded theory to analyze the results.

The result shows that most chairpersons approve the iSchools values of relationship between people, information and technology, nevertheless, they expressed uncertainty regarding the future of iSchools. For the process of adopting the values of iSchools and joining the iSchools movement, the main risks to progress come from within the LIS schools or departments. The consensus among the chairpersons is that the LIS education should reserve its traditional core values, as well as adopt iSchools' values and widely expand in the information profession area.

This study unveiled the attitudes of LIS chairs toward the iSchools movement in China. Its results can help the iSchools movement to develop and promote LIS education innovation globally.

During the last 40 years, the growth and impact of UK business schools have been significant. Relatively few studies have reviewed how business school deans emerge and grow. This paper aims to explore the experiences and psychometric profiles of UK business school leaders to understand their tenures, problems, dilemmas and succession issues.

The study comprised 16 semi‐structured interviews with business school deans and Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaires completed by deans and aspiring deans (associate deans and heads of department). The study uses the executive life cycle and concepts of social capital as theoretical frameworks to understand the dean's role.

The study revealed a pattern of individuals working in their first deanship at their third business school. Their career trajectories highlighted the usefulness of consultancy skills similar to those of a partner in a professional service firm. The importance of the dean's role in terms of business school fit, creating a differentiation strategy and team building were emphasised. The psychometric preferences of the deans in the sample indicated Jungian extroversion, tough mindedness, seeing patterns and making connections, strategic thinking and a tendency to bring issues to closure. Recommendations are made for the development of a more heterogeneous, transnational cadre of business school deans and improved dialogue with heads of universities to understand the positive contribution of business school leaders as changing business models are needed in turbulent times.

There are few explanations of the roles and functioning of business school deans in practice. The insights gained are valuable for business school deans and are, more broadly, of interest to heads of universities and executive search firms. The paper is theoretically and practically relevant to building leadership capabilities in knowledge intensive organisations and professional service firms.

The purpose of the development of the paper was due to the seemingly endless searching for deans to replace the former dean of three to four years.

The paper was developed around the present relevant secondary data.

The key findings of the paper were that deans were being replaced due to the difference in expectation of the various constituents (e.g. students, faculty, administration, parents) in the performance of the SBA.

Limitations of the study were not providing primary data to support the theory based hypotheses of the study.

Deans need to recognize that there will be conflicting expectations relative to the performance of the dean and that deans have a very short time to effectuate change in academic organizations.

Not having such high turnover in dean's positions should provide the stability of management to bring about change need in institutions of higher education.

Identification of key mistakes made by deans as well as the mistakes made by faculty undermine the performance of deans.

We are seeing a growing number of efforts to strengthen the capacity of leaders in higher education, such as those programs offered by the American Council on Education and the Big Ten Academic Alliance; yet, the existing scholarly literature is limited in this area. The purpose of this paper is to add to the body of scholarship on academic leadership education by summarizing the current state of formal training and development initiatives within the Association of American Universities (AAU), focusing primarily on the experiences and perspectives of academic deans and associate deans.

This study consisted of a qualitative review of current academic leadership initiatives promoted on the AAU member institution websites. Additionally, the author conducted interviews with deans and associate deans from AAU institutions to explore dominant themes associated with academic leadership in more detail.

An analysis of the AAU member websites led to the development of a comprehensive matrix consisting of nearly 30 single-spaced pages of leadership initiatives, separated by institution and coordinating office(s). Based on the interviews with deans and associate deans, three communication-centered themes related to the study and practice of academic leadership emerge: academic leadership as the art of cultivating relationships, academic leadership as a direct response to “wicked problems,” and academic leadership as a mosaic of administrative competencies.

Acknowledging the value of their experience in variety leadership development programs, the responses from current deans and associate deans may encourage the development of future programs in this area – programs that provide opportunities for faculty and staff collaboration and equip current and future leaders with the skills and concepts for navigating the complex and contested environment within which contemporary colleges and universities must survive. Additionally, the initial findings from this project may be included in the curriculum of formal and informal academic leadership initiatives.

As leading academic research institutions, one may expect to find a number of well-developed best practices in the area of leadership training and development. Focusing on this group provides a useful benchmark for understanding the methods and content of academic leadership programs. Furthermore, representing the diversity of American research institutions, the AAU provides a broad sample of institutions for this research project. As a point of entry into this area of research, the conversations with deans and associate deans, coupled with the findings of the AAU website review, provide a unique perspective into academic leadership development – an area of growing scholarly and applied importance.

Attitudes of deans of American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accredited schools/colleges of business were surveyed regarding nine areas central to the practice of collegiate level business education. These deans were then classified into three categories in a manner consistent with the new AACSB standards for accreditation. Finally, a one‐way ANOVA indicated the degree to which the attitudes of these groups of deans differed across items on the original instrument. The study suggests implications for the revised accreditation process of the AACSB.

In the context of research on the career advancement of women and men in academia, this paper aims to reflect on how deans at six schools of a Dutch arts and a Dutch sciences‐based university construct the image of the ideal academic, and on how these images are gendered.

Using an inductive approach, the study analyzed the transcripts of semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with six deans (all men) from two different Dutch universities on the career advancement of men and women at their school.

It was expected that the images of the ideal academic would be more gendered in the sciences than in the arts university, considering the stronger male domination in the sciences university. The images of the ideal academic, while fundamentally different, regarding the expertise, the applicability of knowledge, and the visibility needed to be considered successful, were equally gendered in assuming that practicing science leaves little room for caring obligations outside work; in both places science was considered an omnipresent and greedy calling. Moreover, deans at both universities to a similar extent expected women academics not to fit to this standard. Paradoxically, in the arts university deans construct an image of women academics that in some aspects reflects a mirror image of women academics in the sciences university and vice versa.

The paper suggests that in this construction the process of “othering” women academics is more constant than the content of the ideal academic. They contribute to theories on the ideal worker in the field of science by arguing the construction of the ideal academic is fluid rather than fixed. Further research could investigate how the image of the ideal academic changes within the same discipline across different countries with a higher representation of women among full professors, as the findings are limited to The Netherlands.

The paper argues that the fluidity of the ideal academic norm offers space for renegotiating such norms by making it more inclusive for women, which will have positive consequences for women's career advancement in academia.

The contribution of this paper is that constructions of the ideal academic are fluid rather than fixed, while dominant actors in organizations seem to attribute universal value to these images. The “otherness” of women relative to the image of the ideal academic is more constant than the characteristics of these images themselves.

The purpose of this study is to produce a framework and instrument that can be used to improve the management of tacit investigative knowledge in policing agencies based upon Dean's (2000) theory of criminal investigation.

The paper describes the development and large‐scale test of a psychometric scale with a large sample of detectives from the New South Wales Police Force, Western Australia Police, Tasmania Police, Victoria Police and Singapore Police Force. The purpose of the scale is to quantitatively measure the extent to which investigative police adhere to Dean's (2000) four investigative “thinking styles”.

The research produced further empirical evidence of Dean's (2000) theory, but also indicated areas where the scale and theory required readjustment and re‐conceptualisation.

Future research should conduct further large‐scale tests of a revised instrument, which incorporates these changes. In particular, the potential overlap between Dean's (2000) thinking style constructs and other cognitive, psychological and even physiological traits demands further consideration before the instrument can be validated.

Once a robust, valid and reliable instrument is constructed, it may be used to map the tacit investigative knowledge that exists in police agencies and thus, inform the management of that knowledge and the experts who hold it.

This research contributes to the current literature on knowledge management approaches in policing, with a particular focus on the management of tacit investigative knowledge. It also further extends the work of Dean (2000) and his colleagues (Dean et al., 2006, 2007, 2008a, b; Dean and Gottschalk, 2007; Dean and Staines, 2011) in empirically validating Dean's (2000) theory of criminal investigation.

The study design investigated the leadership behavior of deans of education that addresses an important aspect of leadership – leadership is created when there is alignment between the organizational leadership behaviors needed by the institution and the leadership behaviors provided by the organizational leader. A survey of a selected group of deans of education from 35 institutions addressed the questions: what do deans self-identify as their prominent leadership behavior and to what extent do deans use multiple leadership behaviors. The research of Bolman and Deal (1984) provided the frames for analysis: structural, human resource, political, and symbolic frames. The study response rate was 50%. The findings of the study indicated that the majority of respondents perceived their primary leadership behavior as most closely matching the human resource frame. Results also indicated that a majority of respondents did not perceive that they