Abstract
This contribution is an analysis of the leadership styles of the presidents and deans in French universities. The results are drawn from a qualitative study in four institutions where 250 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The relations among these academic leaders as well as the respective conceptualisations of their roles are under scrutiny. The study of the discourses and behaviour of the institutional and intermediate academic leaders indicates that academic leadership styles vary intuitively across institutions. The analysis of the data suggests that each style is consistent with the position of power held by the leader in the internal system of relations among the three lines of authority (academic, administrative and deliberative) that form the university governance structure.
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Acknowledgement
Many thanks to the fellows of the 7th Douro Seminar for their comments on the first draft of this contribution, and in particular to Jef Verhoeven, commentator. I also wish to thank Christine Musselin for her precious advice to improve this chapter. Errors or imperfections are of course my own.
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Mignot-Gérard, S. (2010). Presidents and Deans in French Universities: A Collective Approach to Academic Leadership. In: Meek, V., Goedegebuure, L., Santiago, R., Carvalho, T. (eds) The Changing Dynamics of Higher Education Middle Management. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 33. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9163-5_7
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