If the best universities in the world – who have the widest choice of candidates – systematically appoint top researchers as their vice chancellors and presidents, is this one form of evidence that, on average, better researchers make better leaders? This paper addresses the first part of the question: are they currently appointing distinguished researchers? The study documents a positive correlation between the lifetime citations of a university’s president and the position of that university in a world ranking. The lifetime citations are counted by hand of the leaders of the top 100 universities identified by the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in their ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities’ (2004). These numbers are then normalised by adjusting for the different citation conventions across academic disciplines. The results are not driven by outliers. This paper posits the theory that there are two central components involved in leading research universities: managerial expertise and inherent knowledge. It is suggested here that active and successful researchers may have greater inherent knowledge about the academy that in turn informs their role as leader.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by EconWPA in its series HEW with number
0506003.
Length: 34 pages Date of creation: 17 Jun 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwphe:0506003
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 34. The focus is on leaders of research universities. It draws heavily from citations data. Contact details of provider: Web page: http://129.3.20.41
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (EconWPA).
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)