The Importance and Evaluation of Resilience Leadership Capability in Managing University: An Understanding

Abstract

Leading a public university is unlike managing a corporate organisation. The landscape of a university differs not only in the core business of disseminating knowledge, but university of today and the future is required to sustain in terms of financial, ability to generate certain amount of income, producing high research impact and innovative products that can be churned into commercialisation activities and money; and applying technology in teaching and learning, and work methods. Thus, the needs for a public university to have Vice Chancellors of certain qualities and abilities beyond academic standing is crucial in the next decade. Hence, this research proposal aims to examine a new requirement of a leader in the public universities of Malaysia that is known as resilience leadership. Resilience leaders are referred as leaders who are able to lead in unpredictable environment and be able to cope with the rapid changes within the the criteria and elements that constitute in resilience industry. Since, resilience leadership has not received much attention in the context of higher education industry, therefore it is timely for this study to examine the key elements that constitute to the new ‘breed’ of leaders in managing the dynamic public universities in Malaysia. The study will focus on leadership capability of the Vice Chancellors in leveraging diversity and change to thrive public universities to greater heights. The outcomes of this study is towards development of university resilience leadership quality framework, positioning leadership in the context of education industry. In addition, the findings will have policy implication on the future university leaders, succession planning programmes and measure for effective resilience leadership which can benefit the Ministry of Higher Education, AKEPT, and universities’ talent development centres.