OPINION

the obscure nature of the leadership. These challenges effect how people act in the role.

A survey among 90 academic program di-
rectors (APD) in Australia [ 5] revealed that
…APDs were found to focus signifi-
cantly more on ‘the people issues’ …
than on ‘getting the job done’ … and
significantly less on monitoring their
programs… . In addition, APDs re-
garded as significantly more import-
ant ‘the people issues’ … and ‘getting
the job done’ … and significantly less
important implanting changes … and
monitoring their programs … .

Many of them also considered their role as ‘career killer’ and wanted to exit it as soon as possible. The authors concluded that “if APDs are to take the leadership role seriously they need to know that it will be recognized in the promotion and performance management systems.” The conclusion is obviously targeted to university leadership who define personnel career policies.

I had an interesting opportunity to be involved in small-scale research concerning power issues in program leadership.

In our research, we investigated program
leadership practices in several universities
in Nordic countries, and found quite differ-
ent policies [ 2, 3]. For several universities,
academic program leaders could act only
through personal activity, i.e., they had
only informal power. Only in one univer-
sity was basic funding coordinated by
an academic program leader, who made
agreements with departments about orga-
nizing courses for the program. While such
a strong formal power seemed a promising
idea from the leadership point of view,
the leader felt that communicating with
several departments and several dozens
of teachers squeezed the leadership into
plain management where personal involve-
ment and contacts to the actual education
development were narrow.

The challenge of having only informal power is, of course, that one’s success depends heavily on personal communication and negotiation skills. One faces challenges like how to coordinate the work of independent faculty so that they will work together? How to get people engaged in program and course development? How to negotiate and find agreements on changes in curricula, teaching and assessment methods, including building graduate attributes? Should one take the role of active developer, facilitator for change, or only let the curriculum and its implementation develop organically and restrict one’s actions to filling formal requirements only?

We concluded that both extremes—full formal power and no formal power—seem problematic. Thus, an interesting question emerged from our research—what would be the right balance for formal and informal power, a balance that gives good results in a variety of settings? Unfortunately, our data pool was not large enough to provide any clear answers.

Neither did we find answers in research literature to respond to this dilemma. In their conclusion, Vilkinas and Cartan [ 4] focused heavily on recruitment issues—which competences are required from an academic program leader—as well as clarifying the responsibilities, and recognizing the value of program leadership in promotions.

While these are important points, they do
not, unfortunately, provide much guidance
for the practical work for the academic
program leader. Bryman’s list of principles,
listed above, provides more guidelines, but
his point of view is more focused on formal
power and general leadership.
During the past two years, I encountered
these challenges from another perspective.
I worked as a vice dean of education in
my school, which has several departments,
and provides several degree programs,
including computer science, mathematics,
physics, and some others. One of my tasks
was both to support and direct our academ-
ic program leaders in their work. I started by
interviewing all of them in my school, finding
out that none of them wished to gain strong
formal power. The main argument given was
that if you have full control of teachers in
the program, you also control the personnel
work contracts and that changes your posi-
tion within the community in a radical way.
You become more a manager than an aca-
demic leader and your relation to colleagues
correspondingly changes. This was in line
with our previous finding from another uni-
versity, which provided strong formal power
for its academic program leaders.

What was considered more important for academic program leaders is summarized in three points.

• First, it is important to allocate clear development resources to the academic program leaders. This would allow them to make independent decisions on development actions without a need to always negotiate with department chairs.

• Secondly, clarifying their responsibility and tasks was an obvious need, especially for those who were new in their roles.

• A third important point was that program leadership appeared very different depending on the scope of the program, which in our case ranges from some 20 new enrolled students per year to almost 200 new students a year, with correspondingly more or less diverse set of majors, as well as different number of faculty involved. Obviously one solution would not fit all programs, and flexibility on their tasks was important.

All these points, which we implemented, support the formal power aspect, while still leaving much emphasis on the informal power side of their role. These findings fit our local environment, but they could be useful elsewhere. It is too early, however, to evaluate their impact.

The main argument given was that if
you have full control of teachers
in the program, you also control the
changes your position within
the community in a radical way.