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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.

This chapter introduces the aims, objectives and potential outreach of the handbook. The handbook is both a quest for insights from leadership theory and practice in the contemporary world and a manifesto for leadership training through a value-based approach to authenticity. Contributors in this handbook do not belong to the orthodox authentic leadership community. They offer varied, provocative views and personal case studies of leadership. Some endorse aspects of the concept of authentic leadership while developing new understanding of authenticity, others suggest that it is flawed; others offer fresh, challenging, leadership insights. The chapter concludes with a brief introduction to all chapters in the handbook.

This chapter proposes a sustainable trajectory for leadership and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) organizational change in higher education. Leadership practices and strategies necessary to construct and implement change and cultivate diverse, equitable, and inclusive educational environments are deliberated, with particular emphasis on transformational leadership theories and practices. These types of organization development practices produce concrete transformation in institutions that have long-established, inert, and deeply entrenched cultures in which discriminatory or even racist practices have been deeply embedded and accepted over time. The complex dynamics of transformation in higher education, brought on, in part, by the rigidity of its organizational structure coupled with its history and foundation in racism and racist practices, makes achieving sustainable change difficult in higher education. Transformational change requires the creation of new mental models through meaning making and perspective sharing that allow individuals in higher education to think differently about how higher education institutions should operate given the rapid shifts in our society. Organizational change leaders must engage in deep, purposeful, and critical reflection and examination of the organization's culture to lay the groundwork for significant change. The chapter explores topics such as leading change through transformational leadership and the styles, practices, and capabilities associated with it, leadership development, strategic diversity leadership, and the Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) as change leader in higher education. The internal and external environmental trends demanding substantive change in higher education continue to intensify over time. The demand for pervasive transformation in higher education is resounding, and institutional leaders must be open to and even drive new and innovative approaches to shifting its very core – its DNA, its culture – to meet those demands.

Change in higher education across the globe is taking place at an unprecedented pace. Various groups, especially women, are impacted differently by these changes. Women remain underrepresented in leadership at universities across the globe, and South African higher education is no different. For women to take up senior leadership roles more potently in universities, particularly in the Global South, it is essential that they not only cope with and compete in the patriarchal systems that characterize this sector but are also emboldened to contribute to changing patriarchal hegemony. There are shifts needed in prevailing management styles and leadership discourses toward a pluralistic and inclusive culture, where transformational and equitable leadership cultures become the norm and praxis. Given this context, we assessed the needs of women leaders in the South African higher education sector and designed a program to help shift their experience of themselves and their contexts. This chapter discusses this national executive development program – the Women in Leadership (WiL) program – which was developed and implemented with the aim to advance gender equality and inclusivity in higher education leadership in South Africa. This program aimed to embolden the women leaders in their ability to recognize, address, and impact barriers to gender equality.

This chapter provides personal – co-autoethnographic – reflections on the concept of authentic leadership from authors' professional and life experiences, synthesising factors that could be applied to a hypothetical leader. The authors come from Fortune 500 businesses, entrepreneurship start-ups and the research- and teaching-focused sphere of academia. While they recognise the foundation of authentic leadership, they see trends in the unspoken doctrines – primarily quantitative, positivistic and overly optimistic biases – to be factors hindering its development. The authors discuss practical and theoretical limitations of authentic leadership and suggest these provide the basis for research to develop an understanding of authenticity in leadership.

This chapter proposes authentic leadership as a generic competence and an integral part of doctoral education regardless of field of study. The authors explore its potential to enhance the development of doctoral candidates and academics and search for answers to the questions: Can and should authentic leadership be developed as a generic competence in doctoral education? How can it be designed and implemented in a doctoral training module? What would its learning outcomes be? The authors address these questions in the context of doctoral education. They assert that authentic leadership training should be mandatory for all doctoral candidates, and that supervisors should be actively engaged in the development of this underappreciated transferrable skill.

This case study documents the move to emergency virtual learning at the University of Johannesburg. Prefacing promoting social justice and care, the authors explain how key challenges unique to a university in a developing world context were considered. The findings highlight the importance of agility, adaptability and the role of Ubuntu (i.e. values of compassion, solidarity and sharing) in higher education institutional leadership in a crisis. Furthermore, the authors highlight the need to address how structural inequality and poverty impact the pace of technological infusion in higher education in the Global South.