Exploring the Pressures of Managerialism on Achieving Transformational Educational Leadership

Abstract

The key preoccupation of this article is to investigate the nexus between "managerial turn" in higher education and transformational leadership in educational context.Leveraging on qualitative methodological approach linked to secondary data analysis, this paper explores the relationship between managerialism and transformational educational leadership.The analysis undertaken emphasises that transactional leaders in contrast to transformational leadership fails to inspire, motivate and encourage academics and other higher education staff given the pressures of managerialist regime that is buffeting the educational institutions.Managerialist pressures encourage cost minimisation, compliance regime, control, marketization of educational values and efficiency rhetoric that pervade the current landscape of higher education globally.This analysis and insights provided here will help to guide policymakers, educational institutions, academics and researchers to rethink the place of managerial practice in organisations for a better academic outcome, freedom of faculty members, restoring the pristine values of education and motivation of academics.Consequently, this paper contributes to the growing discourse on managerialism in educational institutions, which is currently undertheorised and understudied.It further sheds light on how reworking leadership style could bring innovativeness, competition and development within the educational sector for transformation as well as to rise against the backwater of management-oriented practices and policies that stifle effort at transformed educational leadership.