Abstract
Due to the many changes that have occurred over the last two decades, especially in connection with the ‘new managerialism’, academia is a complex working environment. Multiple skills are demanded from professors, such as acting as entrepreneurs and mentors with designated leadership competences. This paper investigates the leadership role of academic group leaders in the context of higher education in Germany. It is argued that a servant leadership approach can enable professors to provide effective academic leadership in the current university context. This is due to its strong human orientation and low power distance and its focus on facilitating academic excellence, creativity and innovation. The discussion notes the importance of developing academic group leaders and describes some practical means of implementing servant leadership in higher education.
Citation
Moll, J. and Kretzschmar, L. (2017), "An investigation of the suitability of a Servant Leadership model for academic Group Leaders at German universities", Journal of Leadership Education, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 166-182. https://doi.org/10.12806/V16/I2/T1
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, The Journal of Leadership Education
License
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/