Reflections of South African University Leaders
Much has been written about the ever-growing demands on university leadership worldwide in the face of increasingly complex changes and challenges from within the academy and beyond. However, as we are reminded by Johan Muller in the Introduction to this book, “there are particular features of time...
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| Natura: | Online |
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| Lingua: | inglese |
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African Minds
2026
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| Accesso online: | ONIX_20260415T184307_9781928331100_25 |
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| description | Much has been written about the ever-growing demands on university leadership worldwide in the face of increasingly complex changes and challenges from within the academy and beyond. However, as we are reminded by Johan Muller in the Introduction to this book, “there are particular features of time and place that also throw up unique problems”. It is precisely ‘time and place’ that make this set of reflections by university leaders quite remarkable and distinguishes it from the many biographies to be found in the literature on higher education leadership. … In the main, this collection spans two decades, the 1990s and 2000s, of unprecedented levels of change in South African higher education. Leaders in universities, as well as those responsible for higher education policy in the government and associated statutory bodies, had no neat script to work off, nor ‘manuals’ or prescripts of ‘good’ leadership or practice. Instead, there was palpable excitement about collectively imagining and nurturing a new post-apartheid higher education system, which would contribute to the social and economic development needs of the country, the deepening of democracy and which would also be globally relevant. Most reflections touch on the coalface of leadership, which is the face-to-face interactional dimension, dealing with staff, with students, with council chairs. What comes through clearly, is the importance of what are sometimes called ‘people skills’. In these accounts this is not simply presented as a human relations aptitude, for a number of reasons, first of which is the special nature of universities and their occupants. More than one points out the special challenge of managing the talented people that are academics, and their inbuilt distaste for bureaucracy, their reluctance to be managed or told what to do. The message here is consistently one of needing to be completely open with academics, the importance of maintaining the distinction between ‘collegial’ and ‘executive’ management (avoiding ‘managerialism’), and the critical importance of winning and holding their trust. |
| format | Online |
| id | doab-20.500.12854ir-175949 |
| institution | Directory of Open Access Books |
| language | eng |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| publishDateRange | 2026 |
| publishDateSort | 2026 |
| publisher | African Minds |
| publisherStr | African Minds |
| record_format | ojs |
| spelling | doab-20.500.12854ir-1759492026-04-20T09:25:18Z Reflections of South African University Leaders Education, Council on Higher Social science Cultural & ethnic studies African studies thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSL Ethnic studies::JBSL1 Ethnic groups and multicultural studies Much has been written about the ever-growing demands on university leadership worldwide in the face of increasingly complex changes and challenges from within the academy and beyond. However, as we are reminded by Johan Muller in the Introduction to this book, “there are particular features of time and place that also throw up unique problems”. It is precisely ‘time and place’ that make this set of reflections by university leaders quite remarkable and distinguishes it from the many biographies to be found in the literature on higher education leadership. … In the main, this collection spans two decades, the 1990s and 2000s, of unprecedented levels of change in South African higher education. Leaders in universities, as well as those responsible for higher education policy in the government and associated statutory bodies, had no neat script to work off, nor ‘manuals’ or prescripts of ‘good’ leadership or practice. Instead, there was palpable excitement about collectively imagining and nurturing a new post-apartheid higher education system, which would contribute to the social and economic development needs of the country, the deepening of democracy and which would also be globally relevant. Most reflections touch on the coalface of leadership, which is the face-to-face interactional dimension, dealing with staff, with students, with council chairs. What comes through clearly, is the importance of what are sometimes called ‘people skills’. In these accounts this is not simply presented as a human relations aptitude, for a number of reasons, first of which is the special nature of universities and their occupants. More than one points out the special challenge of managing the talented people that are academics, and their inbuilt distaste for bureaucracy, their reluctance to be managed or told what to do. The message here is consistently one of needing to be completely open with academics, the importance of maintaining the distinction between ‘collegial’ and ‘executive’ management (avoiding ‘managerialism’), and the critical importance of winning and holding their trust. 2026-04-20T09:25:17Z 2026-04-20T09:25:17Z 2026-04-16T13:26:15Z 2016 book ONIX_20260415T184307_9781928331100_25 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/112549 9781928331100 9781928331094 9781928331117 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/175949 eng open access image/jpeg Attribution 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/112549/1/9781928331100.pdf African Minds African Minds 10.47622/9781928331094 10.47622/9781928331094 36099d72-8b22-4bf5-ab27-c2090263b9c6 9781928331100 9781928331094 9781928331117 African Minds 181 Cape Town open access |
| spellingShingle | Social science Cultural & ethnic studies African studies thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSL Ethnic studies::JBSL1 Ethnic groups and multicultural studies Reflections of South African University Leaders |
| title | Reflections of South African University Leaders |
| title_full | Reflections of South African University Leaders |
| title_fullStr | Reflections of South African University Leaders |
| title_full_unstemmed | Reflections of South African University Leaders |
| title_short | Reflections of South African University Leaders |
| title_sort | reflections of south african university leaders |
| topic | Social science Cultural & ethnic studies African studies thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSL Ethnic studies::JBSL1 Ethnic groups and multicultural studies |
| topic_facet | Social science Cultural & ethnic studies African studies thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSL Ethnic studies::JBSL1 Ethnic groups and multicultural studies |
| url | ONIX_20260415T184307_9781928331100_25 |