This project arose from concerns about becoming associate deans, deans and other heads of department and a lack of development for the role. Many were trained as researchers but not as managers. The purpose of the study was to examine roles and expectations placed upon them.

The team started to look at the literature but there was a dearth around leadership for these roles. They did find some literature around the 1940’s and HOD’s roles but not recent literature. The literature from the 1940’s identified the role of the Deans was to:

• Manage faculty staff and promotions and performance
• Committee work
• Budgets
• Managements of programmes
• Conflict resolutions such as student and staff issues

Present issues facing HODs were:

• Entrepreneurial activities such as raising funds, research grants and marketing
• Greater engagement with the community such as professional associations, unions and accrediting bodies
• Quality agenda related to learning and teaching, quality research and rankings
• Legalities such as labour relations and student complaints and legal challenges
• Impact of globalisation such as information age, technology integration, international reputation, increasing access and flexibility

The implications for leadership development included the dissonance between employment criteria and actual role with research versus leadership. What preparation is there for the role? What value is placed on effective leadership? What can be done to promote more effective leadership?

Having undertaken a literature review the speakers have started to interview staff in these roles about their preparation. To date the findings have been that they have had management type training so budgets, performance management and legal issues but not about the developmental parts of their role. The team have now got four countries involved and Susannah and I have contacted the team about being a UK link for the project.