In China, higher education institutions (HEIs) have a governance arrangement in which the university president and the party secretary occupy key roles. However, their legal roles as institutional leaders are vaguely specified in existing legal frameworks. Based on a four-dimensional theoretical model, this paper (i) clarifies the leadership roles…

This article explores genres as recurrent acts of positioning that contribute to associating particular positions with the genre users as social actors. As an illustration, the study investigates the positioning of Chinese university presidents in their published opening convocation speeches. By combining rhetorical move analysis with the…

The concept of application-oriented higher education institutions (A-HEI) in China has something in common with that of cooperative education or dual education institutions. The changes in education system have led to more challenges of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) in the present situation. Based on synergistic…

More than half of the presidents in top universities of China have been grown up in their original universities. According to the upper echelon theory, the "indigenization" characteristics of university presidents will have an impact on their cognitive level and thus affect the scientific research performance of universities. Based on…

Leadership is a critical determinant of university performance. While much attention has been given to the personal traits of university leaders, the differences in leaders' political capital are largely neglected. Grounded in the framework of power relations in the management domain and contextualised in Chinese elite universities, the study has…

This article explores the Chinese literature on Chinese higher educational leadership in order to contribute to the international literature generally and facilitate Chinese higher education leadership research in particular. The seven themes identified in this literature are: the president accountability system led by the Communist Party of China…

This exploratory paper articulates the development, characteristics and nature of global university presidents and their leadership. It draws insights from a growing project which so far has involved in-depth interviews with 18 presidents of major globally focused universities. Analysing and reporting these interview results reveals the enigmatic…

This paper presents an analytical framework of the configuration of the action space in the governance structure of Chinese universities from the perspectives of formal and informal structures and gives concrete explanations of the factors in the analytical framework based on data from interviews with party committee general secretaries and…

This article is based on original research into institutional governance in private universities. It provides an in-depth qualitative study of how the private university in China has responded in practice to government policies. The analysis focuses on three dimensions: the roles of the university council, the president, and the university…

University leadership is considered as a key factor in university development. In a competitive environment, the role of university leadership has become increasingly important. At present, China is committed to building world-class universities, and university leadership is one of the key factors. Thus, what is the ideal university leadership in…

This study attempts to identify the major characteristics of two different groups of institutional leaders in China's leading universities. The study begins with a review of relevant literature and theory. Then, there is a brief introduction to the selection of party secretaries, deputy secretaries, presidents and vice presidents in leading…

The dilemma confronting modern university development presents a challenge to the management ability of university presidents, hence a need to review how successful presidents of the past managed. Wu Yifang, the first Chinese woman president with remarkable achievements in education, has thus come to our attention. As President of Ginling College…

This paper examines institutional governance of the public university in China, investigating the extent to which government has sponsored the autonomy of universities since the inception of the opening up reforms of 1978. The paper sets out to explain how the party governance system of China is interconnected with aspects of the university's…

Research on the group characteristics and channels for selection of party secretaries at private institutions of higher education has important significance in strengthening leadership by party organizations and perfecting internal governance structures at private institutions of higher education. A survey of 293 private institutions of higher…

A new organization often encounters the liability of newness that increases its chance of failing as a startup enterprise (Freeman, Carroll, and Hannan 1983). New organizations located in a foreign country also face the liability of foreignness (Zaheer and Mosakowski 1997), as cultural differences make new foreign ventures especially risky.…