**4. Dominance of managerialism leadership in higher education**

This section discusses new managerialism as an emerging leadership model for governing institution of higher learning. New managerialism is stylish and embodies ideology that serves the needs and interests of managers in public services such as public education [49]. Through the practices of managerialism as a form of leadership in higher education, power relations, and dominance are consolidated. In essence, managerialism, for Davis et al. [50] has led to a tyranny of bureaucracy, which did not only disempower middle managers but also the entrenched culture of conformance over collegiality, control at the cost of innovation and experimentation, and an overarticulation of strategy, which devalues the strategy.

Universities are run through faculties staffed with professionally hired staff supported by centralized and decentralized service units created to maintain the corporate image and service both the primary (students) and secondary (government, funders, and society at large) stakeholders. As such higher education in Africa and throughout the world operates based on corporate cultures, values, and practices. Universities emulating industries made Bass [51] to conclude that:

*Increasingly, the universities hired faculty who held appropriate doctoral degrees. Business leaders who served on college and university boards of overseers sought a more professional and business-like organisation to replace the prevailing structure, or lack of thereof. Their oversight and direction of the university encouraged presidentsvice-chancellors to develop managerial plans reflecting best practices from the private sector.*

The consequences of embracing managerialism led to the erosion of academic freedom and autonomy, scholarship and activism. According to Davis et al. [50], managerialism engenders bureaucratic tyranny, which brought a culture of conformance over collegiality, control at the cost of innovation and experimentation, and an over-articulation of strategy. Viewed from a "managerialist" discursive notion of leadership, public institutions such universities are turned into profession-based organizations with market mechanisms, corporate organizational structures, and

### *Toward Advancing African Scholarship through Afrocentric Leadership in Higher Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108459*

clear principles of accountability and responsibility being the underpinning pillars [20]. The new economic order demands that academic institutions become more efficient and effective in producing and transferring education [52]. Essentially, these managerial directives are further determined by corporate strategic plans anchored on maximizing academic performance through outputs, improving teaching and learning models, as well as terminal efficiency in higher education. Within higher education, corporate structures and cultures are reinforced by administrative and support units responsible for "student affairs, enrolment management, legal affairs, financial aids, public safety, information technology, human resources" ([53], p. 26). This is a huge enterprise for higher education leadership to contend with in the mist of swiping challenges globally. Ndlovu-Gatsheni [54] contends that:

*The quest for all universities to become research-intensive institutions brought with it 'managerialism' as the new governance framework to run higher education institutions. The interface of managerial approach to government and corporate university subject education and knowledge for 'commodification and marketization'.*

With the culture of managerialism, higher education, particularly universities, operate simulating the corporations with decision-making powers centralized at Senate and management, grounded on decentralization of administrative duties under appointed school and faculty managers [55]. Higher education is currently dominated by the managerialism as the leadership and governance model. In this context, managerialism denotes a set of organizational and social technologies for the efficient management of organizational matters based on managing clients/taxpayers as consumers operating in a turbulent marketplace [56]. Managerialism, according to Maake [57], is the new jargon of higher education, which mirrors the private sector unleashing and entrenching some oppressive culture. The dominance of managerialism leadership in higher education mirrors the bureaucratic university as espoused by [58]. The university as a bureaucracy is often associated with the corporate nature of a university. Through a bureaucratic university, institutions of higher learning are run resembling businesses with bureaucratic procedures and processes imposed on academic life. Some of these procedures entail student admissions, the appointment of staff, and the balance of academic activities, examinations, research applications, curriculum structures, recording of research activities and publications, teaching hours, and meeting with research students [58–61].

In higher education, bureaucratic procedures are enforced by regulation of academic activities by non-academic staff who happened to be administrators and managers constructing such procedures. Declining state funding, changing student demographics, new technological developments, and increased market pressures are among the challenges cited for universities to be subdued to the practices of managerialism [50]. This situation renders the management of universities in particular to be complex and having to adopt public sector management styles, numerous hierarchical layers, and costly administrative burdens, Chaharbaghi [62] and bureaucratic systems. University management and governance structures are bureaucratized with the Vice-Chancellors as the institutional heads with senates and councils as policy directive structures. Below the Vice-Chancellors are the Deans heading faculties with professional techno-savvy managers as administrators. Administratively, higher education institutions are headed by Vice-Chancellors who in turn are accountable to the Councils and Senates as the highest policymakers. In essence, Vice-Chancellors provide strategic direction and pragmatic implementation of goals and programs.

Through the help of designated professional personnel and units, Vice Chancellors provide an oversight role on issues relating to finances, health, transformation, external relations, and ceremonial functions as well as social welfare of both students and staff. Thus, a collaborative approach by all higher education stakeholders is fundamental in finding sustainable solutions to challenges facing the sector and the African continent at large [19]. This multiple-layered structure does not only apply to African higher education but also to the entire academic world.

This chapter questions the efficacy of managerialist-centered leadership when it comes to the advancement of African scholarship for public good. Similar to any other public organizations, leadership in higher education utilizes positional and personal powers to accomplish organizational goals [63]. In the underdeveloped regions, neomanagerialism has reinvented itself through education and by engendering a capitalist and Western depended society. Rodney [64] remarked that:

*Equally important has been the role of education in producing Africans to service the capitalist system and to subscribe to its values. Recently, the imperialists have been using new universities in Africa to keep themselves entrenched at the highest academic level.*

This implies that leadership in the academia is caught in the vortex of serving two masters, one being the capitalist system and the other one of education for public good. Higher education especially the universities are subdued to serve the neoliberal agenda. Operating under the neo-managerialist approach to leadership, higher education is designed to prepare students to be competitive global labor market economy [65]. Despite the newly paraded managerial-leadership role imposed on higher education, African students in particular continue to suffer from "epistemic deprivation," Morrow ([66], p. 23), due to educational injustices perpetuated by hegemonic education system with denied epistemological access to quality and decolonized higher education [65]. For higher education to confront challenges of "cost, the value of degrees, perceptions of elitism, access, and the imperative to educate a more diverse student body" Connolly et al. [67, 68] urge educational institutions to adopt a multipronged approach aimed at increasing opportunities for improving and growing the higher education sector with an agile focus on public service and social responsibility. Dancing to the tune of New Managerialism, higher education sector is not only a "politicised and fragmented system," Bass ([53], p. 16), but its leadership is also at the crossroads in terms of balancing the conflictual aspirations and ambitions with institutional recognition and performance. Somehow these complex and bureaucratic challenges demand Afro-transformational leadership with intellectual stamina to transform the sector into developmental and student-centered institutions. This transformative agenda demands skilled, emotionally intelligent, influential, committed, and networked leadership capable of sustaining scholarship in all fields. In such regard, higher-education-based Afrocentrism could be instrumental in building the capacity and culture of evidence-based research and publications.

Against the adversaries of the new managerialism tide, the application of Afrocentric leadership could emerge to foster values-based leadership inspired by commitment to transform higher education [69]. Operating in a resource-dependency environment has forced higher education institutions to convert their intellectual property into consultancy endeavors and think tanks only focused on research for policy recommendations [70]. The authors argue that such trend has made knowledge institutions to succumb to "academic capitalism," Marginson and Considine ([71], p. 49), where universities are

willing to sacrifice their principles on the altar of resource accumulation and institutional prestige. Such emerging trajectory has deviated universities from problematizing societal issues and intellectual debates as the basis for theorization and intellectual development.
