University Presidents’ Leadership Styles in China’s Application-Oriented Higher Education

Abstract

Sharing something in common with cooperative education, application-oriented universities has been a growing trend in China’s higher education development. For application-oriented university presidents, the primary concern is to determine what leadership styles to adopt to face the opportunities and challenges inherent in changing situations. Based on the situational leadership theory and the synergistic leadership theory, this research applies a mixed methodology to analyze the leadership styles of application-oriented university’s presidents and identify the common characteristics and differences in their leadership styles. Two presidents from University S and University X were chosen as respondents as both of them had experience with application-oriented universities from developed areas on the Southeast coast of China. The investigation reveals that they have adopted a participating leadership style and a selling leadership style, respectively. In light of the synergistic leadership theory, it also points to some similarities and differences in their leadership styles. This research study provides important considerations in terms of the internal and external factors of leadership style adoption.