Academic Leadership: A Critical Literature Review and Implications for Human Resource Development

Abstract

Leadership has been an important field in human resource development but efforts to understand leadership in academic leadership have been neglected meanwhile higher education have been placed under great pressures to meet the demands of their complex stakeholders. We conduct a literature review with the support of Nvivo software. Several themes are emerged in literature namely changing context of higher education, characteristics of effective academic leadership and factors as well as consequences of academic leadership. We also propose a conceptual framework to further enhance our understanding of academic leadership. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Keywords: academic leadership, higher education, human resource development