Boundary spanning in higher education leadership: identifying boundaries and practices in a British university

Abstract

The increasingly dynamic and complex higher education (HE) environment calls for high levels of boundary-spanning skills from leaders. The importance of boundary spanning is raised by the need for leaders to engage across internal and external boundaries to formulate new strategic responses to a complex set of forces and pressures facing the sector. This paper investigates the salience of boundary spanning leadership (BSL) practices through qualitative research on a group of leaders in one UK HE institution. The paper finds varying evidence for the range of boundary-spanning activities proposed in previous literature and concludes in the present case that leadership achieves the ‘managing boundaries’ stage of the BSL nexus, but has more limited achievement at the highest ‘discovering new frontiers’ stage.

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