Swimming against the tide? Women leaders promoting research in a new university

Within a European and wider global context, this paper will focus on collaborative strategies adopted by women leaders to promote research and build research capacity, foregrounding successful approaches as well as barriers and problems within new managerial cultures. The research aims to identify factors which enabled or impeded strategic developments, introduced by women leaders, to promote research activities in a new, teaching-intensive university in the UK.

Narrative enquiry, focusing on critical incidents (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005), was used as a basis for in-depth biographical interviews with six women in research leadership roles in a post-1992 university. The women were asked to describe stories/critical incidents related to helping or hindering events. The women’s narrative accounts were coded thematically, using a grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1998).

The women leaders demonstrated highly skilful, principled leadership styles and a blend of inclusive, collegial approaches with direction and vision. It will be argued that a balance was maintained at the new university between new managerialism and a caring ethos, which provided a supportive context for women leaders. Nevertheless, the historical culture of the university as a teaching institution created considerable pressures, which hindered the progress of research developments (Griffiths, 2012).