Highly cited leaders and the performance of research universities
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.
Section snippets
Part one—longitudinal evidence
It has recently been shown that there is a positive correlation between the scholarly achievement of a university's president and the position of that university in a global league table. The higher a university is ranked in the ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities’,4 the higher the life-time citations of its leader (Goodall, 2006). This cross-sectional pattern has also been replicated for
Methodology
The hypothesis is tested by using multiple regression analysis with the change in university performance as the dependent variable and the scholarly success of presidents as the key independent variable. The focus is on longitudinal improvements in university performance. Control variables for university income, presidential age and discipline are also used. These are incorporated to check the robustness of the correlations between university performance and a leader's research history.
What the leaders say about performance in the research assessment exercise
Before looking at the statistical evidence, it is interesting to hear from UK vice chancellors who, in my interview, answered the question: ‘How much can a university leader influence their institution's performance in the Research Assessment Exercise and generally raise the research quality of a university?’ The responses are numerous, but a sample are presented below (names are not attributed to statements for reasons of confidentiality—information on the qualitative data collection process
Why scholar-leaders might improve the performance of research universities
The quantitative evidence above suggests that hiring scholar-leaders into research universities can result in improved research performance. In this section I will draw upon interview material with US presidents and UK vice chancellors to try to bring us closer to potential explanations about why scholar-leaders might improve the performance of their universities. It is interesting to hear from leaders themselves and to conjecture why it might be beneficial for universities to select presidents
Conclusion
This study examines whether university performance is linked to leadership. It uncovers evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, consistent with the idea that leaders who are better scholars may be able to help improve the later research performance of their universities. This lag is important to the possibility of a causal case. By constructing a new panel data set, the paper shows – in Section 2, in figures such as Fig. 2 and tables such as Table 7 – that the characteristics of a leader
Acknowledgments
For valuable discussion I would like to thank: James Adams, Warren Bennis, Ronald Ehrenberg, Stephen Machin, Robert May, Ben Martin, Andrew Oswald, Henry Rosovsky, Howard Thomas, David Wilson, and three anonymous referees. I am also extremely grateful to the many busy US and UK university leaders who agreed to be interviewed. Finally, for funding this study I am indebted to the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
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