The role of Head of Academic Department/School is one of the most important senior leadership roles in any university with responsibility for managing education and student experience and research and enterprise activities. Academic leaders at this level play a pivotal role in disciplinary leadership, strategy development, business planning and in leading change. The role is a mission-critical link between academics and senior management involving the navigation of a complex set of institutional dynamics, significant resource constraints, competing priorities and perspectives.
In this second of GatenbySanderson’s Becoming … series we have been speaking with recently appointed Heads of Departments/Schools to explore their experiences of becoming academic managers. We are incredibly grateful to everyone we spoke to for their honesty and insights.
In 2004, Professor Martin Parker, then at the University of Leicester, published an article called Becoming Manager or The Werewolf Looks Anxiously in the Mirror, Checking for Unusual Facial Hair. [1] In this autobiographical article, Martin reflected on his experience of becoming the Head of the Management Department at Keele University three years earlier. He talked about how becoming a manager ‘puzzled and challenged’ him in equal measure. As a Professor of Management, he had assumed that ‘… management was something – an attitude, a set of skills, a form of character, a kind of language; something that can be learned by managers …’ He reflected on ‘the fragmented character of managerial work, the changing relations between self and colleagues, and the seductions of power, centrality and speed.’ He also set out his reflections ‘on the relationship between a critical management, academic identity and managerial practice.’
Since Martin first became Head, the role has become even more critical to institutional success. Heads are at the forefront of executing significant change and transformation that involves incredibly challenging, and often longstanding, people and culture issues to address. They are charged with driving up academic productivity to meet sets of sometimes conflicting strategic KPIs. Their exposure to governing bodies is unrecognisable from what it once was and, depending on how their institution structures its professional services, they may have little or, in some cases no, on the ground support.
