Governing board professionals, described in The Chronicle of Higher Education as "a pocket of power advising both the board and the administration," (Jesse, 2023, para. 3) are charged with ensuring governing boards meet their fiduciary obligations and operate effectively. Despite the role's growing recognition as a "linchpin…

In this essay, I introduce the term "governance inversion" to describe a situation in which a university administration repositions a governance body in such a way as to limit its legitimate governance function. Structural conditions might make governance inversion more likely, but narratives might also be deployed to make the inversion…

The present basic qualitative researched sought to explore the experiences and practices of academic deans in community colleges. I leveraged Schein's Model of Organizational Culture as a framework for data analysis. Schein's Model includes three layers of organizational culture; artifacts, espoused beliefs and values, and the inner most layer of…

The boundaries of higher education organizations (HEOs) are becoming increasingly porous both in the USA and globally. Research has shown that individuals within universities (e.g., trustees and faculty) can serve as boundary spanners who connect universities to their external environments. However, our knowledge of how individuals span HEO…

The university academic manager (AM) or head of school/department is typically positioned in a hierarchical world: as a middle manager 'sandwiched' between senior management and subordinates. I propose a different framing: the AM cohabits two worlds, the worlds of hierarchy and collegiality respectively. Using an ideal type framework and data…

The organization and management of universities have changed radically in recent years and has been the subject of various studies. One line of research that receives little attention, however, is the study of the leadership of university presidents as relevant actors in the academic and administrative management of universities and in the…

At a time of the British government's heightened interest in Further Education (FE) college governance, this paper explores Academic Staff Governor (ASG)'s professional and power status at three colleges in England. The study draws upon relevant literature to identify concepts related to ASGs' power and professional status in governance. An…

Purpose: This study provides a country-specific and sector-wide study of campus sustainability. Campus sustainability is a key consideration for the higher education (HEI) sector, and campus sustainability officers and managers manage its reporting and planning. Global and country-specific studies to date have focussed on individual organisation…

Existing scholarship tends to understand university governance structurally (emphasizing formal authority and resource environments), culturally (focusing on history, norms, and leadership), or by combining both approaches (Kezar & Eckel, 2004). These models understand governance in instrumental terms, as the means for steering the university.…

The study sought to learn how governing boards of public university systems located along the U.S.-Mexico border exercise their roles and influence over matters of student diversity. Traditionally, governing boards have been dominated by older white males and have concentrated their attention on high-level financial issues. In addition, the boards…

Most new college and university administrators, especially if they come directly from the faculty ranks or from outside academia, receive little if any training. Rather, they try to succeed mostly by stumbling through the (semi-)dark with a combination of their own knowledge and experience as well as on-the-job learning. This can lead to costly…

This article is a case study describing the University College of the North's (UCN) response to the COVID-19 pandemic, outlining pandemic planning and management processes at UCN from March 11, 2020, to September 30, 2021. UCN's planning processes evolved from a top-down approach led by administration to an approach that saw greater shared…

Board professionals play crucial planning, coordination, and support roles in the day-to-day life of college, university, and foundation governing boards. Their work is often conducted behind the scenes but is critical to board success and performance. The coronavirus-necessitated switch by higher education to new modes of operation, often at high…

This paper presents an analytical framework of the configuration of the action space in the governance structure of Chinese universities from the perspectives of formal and informal structures and gives concrete explanations of the factors in the analytical framework based on data from interviews with party committee general secretaries and…

The study aimed to determine how lecturers have adopted organizational democracy and academic freedom in Turkish state universities, as well as to find out their views on its appropriation for Turkey. A correlative descriptive survey model is used in this study. The study sample was included 418 academics working at state universities in Ankara.…