Diversifying Leadership in Elite Universities
About the project
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Diversifying Leadership in Elite Universities: The Development of an Empirically Grounded Recruitment Framework for the Global Higher Education Sector
A cursory glance of the roll call of names across the ‘top 100′ universities internationally, reveals the dominance of predominantly white males in positions of power and influence. Men comprise 75% of institutional leaders in 2023. The recent appointment of women to lead Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge and MIT indicates an appetite to break down gendered and racialised conceptions of leadership within the context of the equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) agenda. But what is our understanding of the biographies of those who lead elite universities globally? And therefore, what are the wider implications for diversifying leadership at this level? This project brings together a team of established higher education experts to analyse the trajectories to leadership in the worlds’ most elite universities. The project sets out to illuminate the basis on which institutional leaders are selected into, and from, the candidate pool and to develop a recruitment framework to support the diversification of university leaders in elite institutions internationally.
Research Questions
RQ1: Who are our university leaders?
- Can appointment to institutional leadership be anticipated based on success factors evident in collective biographies?
- What is the trajectory to leadership in the ‘top 100’ universities?
- Is there a model or a mould? And if so, what are the implications for EDI in higher education leadership in elite universities?
RQ2: On what basis are they selected?
- What are the ‘unwritten assumptions’ on which appointment to leadership is predicated?
- Is there a dissonance between theories espoused (e.g., as evidenced in job specifications) and theories in use (i.e., the ‘success’ factors)?
RQ3: How can we increase diversity university leadership in elite institutions?
- What practices can be implemented during recruitment to reduce potential bias in the decision-making processes that underpin selection and appointment?
- How could the development of an empirically informed recruitment framework contribute to greater diversity in senior leadership in elite universities?
Currently, the ‘success’ factors that lead to being appointed to the position of leader are obscure. This paucity of information has led, we hypothesise, to unconscious bias practices in the recruitment and selection processes of these senior leaders. We seek to identify and interrogate these success factors in order to make the implicit explicit; to deconstruct unwritten assumptions and the concept of ‘cultural fit’. A central aspect of the project is to consider to what extent ‘merit’ is a form of bias that masks ‘indirect’ discrimination and reinforces the status quo, drawing upon Manfredi and Vickers’s (2017) concept of objective versus subjective merit and Sandel’s (2020) argument that meritocratic credentialism is the last acceptable prejudice. The role of Executive Search Firms (ESFs) has grown significantly since the 1980s to become dominant in the appointment of VCs, and more recently, PVCs, Deans and Heads of Department (Watson, 2009, Manfredi, Clayton-Hathway and Cousens, 2019) and consequently is an important aspect of this project.
The project has two main aims: first, to identify any implicit biases in the recruitment processes and how this might impact on the appointment of leaders in elite universities; and second, to develop a recruitment framework for diversifying university leadership in elite universities.
These aims will be pursued by means of the following three objectives: first, through collective biography and interviews, to profile, classify and identify the success factors associated with being appointed as an institutional leader in an elite university; second, to interrogate by means of discussions with key stakeholders/end users, the basis on which leaders are selected; and third, to co-produce with key stakeholders and end-users an empirically-informed recruitment framework for use in the recruitment of senior leaders in elite universities.
The range of beneficiaries and end-users of this project is exceptionally wide owing to the multi-country scope, mixed-methods approach, and cross-disciplinary relevance of our study. Our sample of world leading universities encompasses institutions spanning 16 countries across North America, Europe, Australia and East and South-East Asia. Our empirically grounded recruitment framework will be of value to a range of end-users, including Executive Search Firms, university recruitment panels/governing bodies, human resources, emerging leaders and EDI specialists and practitioners. The project has far-reaching benefits to other elite professions, including medicine and law.
Our official project partner is Advance HE.