Academic government and management in higher education institutions: Study of heads of academic units

This article examines the development of the leadership activity of the academic-managers in the Spanish higher education institution. Academic-managers are those teachers who perform leadership roles in college temporarily (Deem and Brehony, 2005). Indeed, academic-managers taken into account in this study are those Deans and Department Directors in charge of leadership responsibilities, in a context where management is characterized by non-professionalism, temporariness and where managers are elected based on representativeness criteria. We opted for a qualitative methodology and the data was obtained from 23 interviews and one focus group. The results allow us to identify three periods in the development of the managerial tasks. The first one consists in a early learning and contextualization, the second one is the development of functions, and the last one the institutional projection and relay in management tasks. Finally, we compare the main aspects in the development of academic roles. The comparison between the three main academic functions (teaching, research and management) allows us to identify new perspectives for future research work.