Leadership for Academic Units: A Performance Improvement Model for Department Chairs, Deans, and Academic Vice Presidents (and those who aspire to be)

Introduction

Guiding an academic unit so that it deliberately and unrelentingly pursues its mission will create a continuous stream of improvement strategies. These strategies can be the result of SWOT analysis, needs assessment activities, annual lessons learned exercises, the suggestions of faculty, students and staff who are motivated by the simple desire to make something better, or any combination thereof. Regardless of how it is derived, an appropriate and relevant strategy deserves to be managed through a systematic and controlled process toward its appropriate destination—whether sustainable implementation or the file drawer.

This ongoing process of change creation and change management (Lick and Kaufman, 2000) is usually met by a reaction ...