By Amanda Goodall, Warwick Business School

Abstract: There is a large literature on the productivity of universities. Little is known, however, about how different types of leader affect a university’s later performance. To address this, I blend quantitative and qualitative evidence. First, I show that the most outstanding research universities in the world are led, overwhelmingly, by top scholars. Second, by constructing a new longitudinal dataset, I demonstrate that the research quality of a university improves some years after it appoints a president (vice chancellor or rector) who is an accomplished scholar. To try to explain why scholar-leaders might improve the research performance of their institutions, I draw from interview data with twenty-six heads in universities in the United States and United Kingdom. The findings have policy implications for governments, universities, and a range of research and knowledge-intensive organizations.

Amanda’s main work is on leadership and productivity. She focuses on knowledge-based organizations -- such as research universities and hospitals -- where the core business is reliant on expert knowledge. She uses a mixture of quantitative and qualitative evidence to try to identify what kinds of leaders improve organizational performance. She has a book on the topic, ‘Socrates in the Boardroom: Why Research Universities Should be Led by Top Scholars’ (Princeton University Press, October 2009). During the first half of 2008 Amanda was a Research Fellow at Cornell University, and she spent the latter part of the year as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Zurich. She gained her PhD in 2007 at Warwick Business School.

Amanda’s journal publications and CV are available at www.amandagoodall.com.

The paper is available here

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