Highly cited leaders and the performance of research universities

Abstract

There is a large literature on the productivity of universities. Little is known, however, about how different types of leader affect a university's later performance. To address this, I blend quantitative and qualitative evidence. By constructing a new longitudinal dataset, I find that on average the research quality of a university improves some years after it appoints a president (vice chancellor) who is an accomplished scholar. To try to explain why scholar-leaders might improve the research performance of their institutions, I draw from interview data with 26 heads in universities in the United States and United Kingdom. The findings have policy implications for governments, universities, and a range of research and knowledge-intensive organizations.

Introduction

Although there is a large literature on the research productivity of universities,¹ little is known about how different types of leader affect a university's performance. The success of a leader may be due to many factors. Nevertheless, it is important that researchers try to establish the effectiveness of heads despite the cloudy conditions, because leaders usually have the most power in organizations, and substantial resources are invested in their recruitment and pay.

In this paper I attempt to fill the gap. Using new longitudinal data and interview evidence, I concentrate on a particular leader-characteristic—the level of scholarly expertise a university president or vice chancellor² possess. The core business of a university is research and teaching, but research quality is what separates top universities from their competitors. Institutions that produce the best research receive the largest share of public funding and private philanthropy. There is also a significant relationship between the quality of research and the extent of industry funding (Gulbrandsen and Smeby, 2005). The focus in this paper is on scholarship. It seems important to know whether individuals who have obtained a high standard as a researcher bring something different to the leadership role. An alternative possibility is that the head of a research university primarily needs high managerial ability and that the level of scholarly ability is unimportant. Using quantitative and qualitative data this paper attempts to address the question: does it matter to the performance of a university if the leader has been a top scholar?

First, in Section 2, I test the hypothesis by means of regression analysis incorporating time lags. With a panel of 55 research universities I show that a university's research performance improves if, a number a number of years earlier, a president who is an accomplished scholar has been hired. This goes beyond a simple contemporaneous cross-sectional correlation. Next, in Section 5, I draw upon qualitative data and present possible explanations about why university performance might be enhanced under scholar-leaders. I interview 26 heads from universities in the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK)—the list is in Fig. 1.

Four themes emerge from the interviews: First, scholars are seen as more credible leaders. A president who is a researcher will gain greater respect from academic colleagues and appear more legitimate. Legitimacy extends a leader's power and influence. Second, it is argued that being a top scholar provides a leader with a deep understanding or expert knowledge about the core business of universities. This informs a head's decision-making and strategic priorities. Third, interviewees suggested that it is the president who sets the quality threshold in a university, and, therefore, that the bar is raised when an accomplished scholar is hired. Thus, a standard bearer has first set the standard that is to be enforced. Finally, a president who is a researcher sends a signal to the faculty that the leader shares their scholarly values, and that research success in the institution is important. It also transmits an external signal to potential academic hires, donors, alumni and students.

Research universities are part of the knowledge-intensive sector (Mintzberg, 1979). More broadly, this paper suggests that in knowledge-based organizations, where the majority of employees are expert workers, having a leader who is also an expert may be beneficial to the institution's long-term performance. Put another way, my central argument is that in settings where expert knowledge is the key factor that characterizes an organization's core business, it is likely to be expert knowledge that should be key in the selection of its leader.

Universities are an interesting case because they are a significant source of innovation in society, and also their leaders’ technical expertise can be measured reasonably objectively. There exist a number of influential empirical studies of leaders in higher education.³ Yet there has been little statistical thinking about how university presidents and vice chancellors can influence performance. The paper's results seem of potentially wide interest to universities, policy-makers and our understanding of R&D processes.