Leadership: challenge or need in faculty development of the universities

ABSTRACT
 The purpose of the present study is to present the importance of professor leadership and raise some ideas for improving leadership in these professionals. To this end, 23 professionals from 9 countries were interviewed, being university professors and managers with experience as professors. The results should help the universities’ managers to deliberate and implement a leadership program for their faculty. It was possible to raise some ideas for improving leadership in these professionals and we present a guideline to put these theories into practice. This guideline has six step and it must be understood as a guide, not as a rule. Finally, it is important to take into consideration that providing an opportunity for professors to develop their leadership skills will give them the chance to grow and all stakeholders will benefit.


Introduction
The process of any country's development, specificity of implementing economic, social, and political transformations in the context of global competition are always associated with a constructive economic development strategy that should be in line with the national interests and global trends in structural change. In this context, the education characterizes the social aspect of the economic development (Dalevska et al. 2019).
The asymmetry of the world countries' development is growing, which increases the gaps in the level of education among them. One of the main drivers of this process is the professor. With the speed of change in society, it becomes relevant the development of this professional to lead his students to achieve a better level of learning (Bisaso and Hölttä 2017). Thus, this article brings contributions about how education, leadership, faculty development are key ingredients for country's human and socioeconomic development.
We have many studies in these areas, but not many regarding leadership in the education system. Daniëls, Hondeghem, and Dochy (2019, 110) reviews providing a general overview of effective school leadership theories and effective professional development are rare. In this sense, universities can be considered as a complex organization (Năstase, Florescu, and Mircioi 2018). Organizations have been viewed as rational entities in pursuit of goals, as coalitions reacting (or proacting) to strategic constituencies, as individual need-meeting cooperatives, as information processing systems, and so on (Cameron 1981).
Today it can be observed that the universities engaged in entrepreneurial activities often review and reform their organization in order to respond to external demands effectively as well as internal demand. An entrepreneurial university, on its own, seeks to work out a substantial shift in organizational character so as to arrive at a more promising posture for the future. Governance, management, leadership are changing in these educational organization around the world and should come first (Bleiklie and Kogan 2007).
In their recent studies, Ekman, Lindgren, and Packendorff (2018) agree that people should come first, and they point out that universities need to be concerned about leadership development and this should be done with the faculty. So, following these authors' ideas, the importance of leadership development in teachers is highlighted. The importance of leadership development in teachers is evidenced. Education managers know this importance, but few know what the main challenges are, where to start, and what skills should be developed. It is not their fault; this is a topic about which here is a consensus but for many reasons is neglected (Daniëls, Hondeghem, and Dochy 2019).
Regarding leadership, Harris (2003) agrees with the above idea and affirms that despite extensive literature on 'leadership in education', the dominant discourse about leadership does not include any serious consideration of the term. For this author, professor leadership is either dismissed as yet another label for continuing professional development or simply rejected because of the complexities of viewing professors as leaders within a hierarchical school system where leadership responsibilities are very clearly delineated.
Recently, Bloom et al. (2015) developed an international management index for management education and presented descriptive evidence on management quality and education outcomes across schools and universities of different types within and across countries. They found out that the adoption of modern managerial processes is fairly limited: on an index of 1-5, the average management score across all countries is 2.27, which corresponds to a low level of adoption of many of the managerial practices. Regarding the emerging economies, Brazil (2.0) and India (1.7) have the lowest scores. This is evidence shows the importance of the discussion promoted by the present study. In terms of Brazil, we are the largest country in South American with an estimated population of 204 million habitants. Approximately 18% of the Brazilian population consists of children ranging in age from 0 to 11 years, and 12% of the population consists of young people ranging in age from 12 to 18 years old, thus indicating that a considerable portion of its population requires basic educational programs (Ministério da Educação 2016). The Brazilian education system is composed of public and private schools. Even though public education still holds more than 80% of the students, the number of students enrolled at private schools increased 14% from 2010 to 2015 according to the research from INEP (National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira), one governmental organization Concerning to high education the number does not change so much, Brazil has one of the highest proportions of students in private universities of any country in Latin America: 73% compared with an average of 45% in the region as a whole (Nes 2015).
So, we can consider the education management as a field of study for business researchers because the results and changes needed depends on the management and leadership actions and it begins with leader motivation. This way if professors develop leadership skills they will leverage the educational organization as well as student achievement (Crawford 2016;Epitropaki et al. 2017). It is worth mentioning that literature uses different terms like a professor, teacher, and lecturer. So, in order to standardize the text, we will use the term 'professor' because it is wider and although he may have an experience that does not mean that he should not develop leadership.
Given the context described above, the following research question that guided the present research is presented: What are the main challenges in developing leadership in professors? So, in order to respond to this question we developed a qualitative research with some professors and managers from different countries and from Brazil to understand their perceptions and knowledge about professor's leadership development. In addition to bringing the views of professionals from different countries, this study contributes by presenting the limitations and barriers in developing professor leadership and proposes a stepwise model for leadership development.
This study is structured as follows: Section 2 presents the literature review. Section 3 covers methodology and Section 4 discusses the results of the survey. We conclude the research with the final considerations in Section 5.

Literature review
This section is divided into two main topics, leadership, and professors as leaders because it is necessary to understand these concepts to analyze the survey and raise some ideas for improving leadership in these professionals.

Leadership
Initially, we must understand that the study of leadership is not nearly as precise as, for example, the study of chemistry. To begin with, the social world is much less organized and less susceptible to the rules of the physical world (Bennis 1996). Corroborating the idea of the complexity of the issue, Bergamini and Coda (1997) argue that several aspects of leadership studies have proven contradictory, meaning what seemed coherent at a given time does not seem to be enough to explain reality further. Tolfo (2010) adds that 'on the one hand there is a great interest in ways to exercise leadership, on the other hand, there is no widely accepted framework because it shows an unfinished concept in a number of issues'. Besides that, there are different approaches, from the perspective of several authors. Generally, one can understand leadership as the process of providing a direction and influence individuals or groups for the common goals the group are achieved (Hitt, Miller, and Colella 2007). Also, according to these authors, leadership is a continuous process in order to lead a team to achieve the goals.
Given the range of authors on the subject and the various approaches studied in the course of literature, for this literature review, will be concentrated on situational approach to leadership. Another important aspect is that to know what the leader is, it is necessary to emphasize the attributes and roles of a leader (Vries 1997). It is also relevant to study what the leader does, and after that, focus on the process involving leaders and followers (Burns 1978;Kotter 1997). In addition, it is imperative to comprehend the environment, the subordinates, and the time (Bennis and Nanus 1988).
Knowledge of these concepts is the basis of this project. As was shown above, there is not only one definition and one approach. In this sense, Harris (2003) comes with another good interpretation: 'leadership is about learning together and constructing meaning and knowledge collectively and collaboratively. It involves opportunities to surface and mediate perceptions, values, beliefs, information, and assumptions through continuing conversations. It means generating ideas together; seeking to reflect upon and make sense of work in the light of shared beliefs and new information; and creating actions that grow out of these new understandings. It implies that leadership is socially constructed and culturally sensitive. It does not imply a leader/follower divide, neither does it point towards the leadership potential of just one person. It is within this theoretical tradition that the idea of professor leadership is most clearly located' Lastly, Lord and Maher (1991) mention that the better the match between a perceived individual and the leadership concept held by the perceiver, the more likely it is that the perceiver actually 'sees' the individual as a leader. It is what the leadership categorization theory defines. So it is possible to understand that someone recognized as a leader is also perceived to be more powerful and influential (Cronshaw and Lord 1987).
In our context, it is important to comprehend the leader and follower's role this is called leadership and followership identity processes, in particular, play a significant role in indicating 'who will lead' and 'who will follow' as well as 'how leaders and followers will influence' and 'be influenced'. Examining identity is important as most of the dominant theoretical paradigms in the leadership field (e.g. trait theories, transformational and charismatic theories, Leader-Member Exchange) focus on how others see and evaluate leaders (or followers) and how leaders and followers behave. Understanding how leaders and followers see and define themselves, as well as understanding the complex ways in which these self-definitions develop, change, and are influenced by leader-follower interactions and contexts, is an important piece of the leadership puzzle that can offer us unique insights into the drivers of leader and follower behaviors and actions (Epitropaki et al. 2017). The next section will contextualize the roles and definitions about professors as leaders.

Professors as leaders
The concept of 'professor leadership' has emerged in England as a 'new way of looking at leadership at the beginning of this century, yet the idea is far from 'new', for within the USA and Canada, professor leadership is a well-known and accepted form of leadership activity. It has a very respectable academic lineage with internationally known researchers (Harris 2003).
However, before starting any leadership program it is important to keep in mind the benefit of this program. Many authors believe that developing professor leadership will not only be good for the organization, but all stakeholders will benefit. Muijs and Harris (2003) agree with this statement and suggest that professor leadership could have beneficial effects on school improvement, school and professor effectiveness and professor motivation and retention, but that the right conditions need to be in place in order for professor leadership to flourish. Crawford (2016) argues that articulating the unseen in a way that stimulates debate in educational administration, and to do it clearly and carefully is a challenge that we would be willing to accept. There are barriers to the leadership development. For example, some administrators simply cannot devote enough time and energy to school improvement. Fuertes and Sedlacek (1993) give some other example: lack of institutional policy to develop leadership, lack of organizational encouragement, and ignorance of values as barriers to leadership development, in other words, they summarize that some managers and some professors don't know the importance of developing leadership. This is one point that must be clarified to be avoided.
Thus, Harrison and Killion (2007) point out that professors exhibit leadership in multiple ways. Some leadership roles are formal with designated responsibilities and other more informal roles emerge as professors interact with their peers. The variety of roles ensures that professors can find ways to lead that fit their talents and interests. Regardless of the roles they assume, professor leaders shape the culture of their schools, improve student learning, and influence practice among their peers. Harris (2003) affirms that from the international literature there are overlapping and competing definitions of the term 'professor leadership'. The fact that there exists some conceptual confusion over the exact meaning of professor leadership makes its pursuit of legitimacy within the leadership field much more difficult to achieve. So, as shown above, this concept must be clarified, Table 1 brings some concepts about professor leadership.
These shared meanings represent the prevailing values, norms, philosophy, rules, and climate of the organization, in other words its culture, so it is necessary a clear demarcation of roles and responsibilities to implement the concept of professors as leaders (Harris 2003). Similarly, Morgan (1986) affirms that cultural or symbolic theoretical perspective would suggest that leadership is part of the interactive process of sense-making and creation of meaning that is continuously engaged in by organizational members. Leadership therefore can only be understood in relation to shared or invented meanings within an organization.
According to Harrison and Killion (2007), professor leaders assume a wide range of roles to support school and student success, and these roles can be assigned formally or informally. Professors can lead in a variety of ways and can serve as leaders among their peers.
So, to develop the professor's leadership, it is necessary to know their roles so that it will be possible to focus on the skills needed. Table 2 below presents the main roles of professors. Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe (2008) conducted a metaanalysis that compared two types of school leaders: transformational leaders and instructional leaders. The former focus more on professors. They set a vision, create common goals for the school, inspire and set direction, buffer staff from external demands, ensure fair and equitable staffing, and give professors a high degree of autonomy. In contrast, instructional leaders focus more on students.
Seven major mind frames inform high-impact instructional leadership. These leaders understand the need to focus on learning and the impact of teaching. They believe that their fundamental task is to evaluate the effect of everyone in their school on student learning. They also believe that success and failure in student learning are about what they, as professors or leaders, did or did not do. They see themselves as the agent of change. Besides, these kinds of leaders see assessment as feedback on their impact and understand the importance of dialogue and of listening to student and professor voices. They set challenging targets for themselves and for professors to maximize student outcomes. They welcome errors, share what they have learned from their own errors, and create environments in which professors and students can learn from errors without losing face. High-impact instructional leadership is riskier than transformational leadership because leaders have to publicly declare what success means and they may not get there, at least not quickly (Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe 2008) This study comes to show how important it is to discuss this topic, to raise some new ideas and create opportunities for professors to develop their leadership's skills according to the policies of the educational organization that he or she belongs. It is also important to take into consideration that leadership concepts differ Professors who are leaders lead within and beyond the classroom, identify with and contribute to a community of professor learners and leaders, and influence others towards improved educational practice Coggins and McGovern (2014) Professors have a measurable, positive effect on students, schools, and the teaching profession. Teach Plus recruits, selects, and trains outstanding professors to be leaders in their schools and in district and state policy debates Troen and Boles (1994) Collective leadership in which professors develop expertise by working collaboratively Wasley (1991) The ability to encourage colleagues to change, to do things they wouldn't ordinarily consider without the influence of the leader among managers, subordinates and colleagues, the less influence will be exerted (Brodbeck et al. 2000). Effective professor leadership improves teaching and learning outcomes and gives professors`voice in policy making at all levels. In addition, it is necessary to keep in mind that as baby boomers retire and those with less than ten years of experience teaching experience have become the majority of the teaching force, professor leadership is experiencing a resurgence in popularity (Coggins and McGovern 2014). Based on this literature review, in the next section, we present the methodology approach.

Methodology
This section aims to describe the research methodology used in this study. It was followed a qualitative approach used by Marshall and Rossman (1999). The research is in line with a phenomenological research paradigm, in the case of a qualitative proposal, which according to Collis and Hussey (2005) 'emphasizes the subjective aspects of human activity focusing on the meaning, not the measurement of social phenomena'.
The study employs a qualitative approach which is motivated by the multiplicity of universities environments addressed in each respective context. A qualitative approach permits informed answers, enabling researchers 'in-depth studies […] in plain and everyday terms' (Yin 2011). The questionnaire was developed based upon the study of Muijs and Harris (2003) and validated with two professors from Brazil and one professor from US, all of them pursue a doctoral degree and have experience in teaching and management.
This study engaged a two-stage approach to data collection, an introductory phase beginning with the initial explanation of the objective of the research when the participants were able to check the questionnaire (Appendix A) and clarify their doubts and the answers to the items described in the research instrument.
The respondents were chosen for convenience, but they followed the same criteria: university professors and university managers who have been professors. All of interviews were applied for at least one of the authors. The duration of interviews lasted on average 40 min.
The first data collection was performed in the United States in November of 2016. The participants were 14 professors who were attending a Course in the US and 4 associated professors from a Mastering Course focused on Management with an educational approach located in San Antonio, Texas. One of the authors was also attending the same course, so it was possible to meet and interview each respondent individually.
The second data collection was performed in June of 2017 with 5 more respondents. The second authors interviewed 3 managers and 2 professors in a University from the South of Brazil. So the total people interviewed were 23 and they can be classified as follow.
Observing Table 3 it is possible to see that the participants are well qualified to give important contributions for this study. Participants remained anonymous. They were renamed as P1 to P23 because during the analysis in some parts is necessary to refer to his quotations and most of them request to be kept anonymous. Besides that, another characteristic that enriched the research was the variety of countries as can be summarized in the chart below.
The analysis of the empirical material was conducted via a qualitative research process as recommended Marshall and Rossman (1999) whereby the author collects and interprets data (Walsham 2006) based on the literature review. What this will be covered in the next chapter. The analyses categories were built based on Muijs and Harris (2003) and Kempster, Jackson, and Conroy (2011

Results
In this section, we analyze the results. The analysis`categories will follow the main topics as mentioned in Section 3: the importance in developing professors' leadership, the roles for professor leaders, the most relevant leadership skills and limitations/barriers one's face in developing professor' leadership.

The importance in developing professor leadership
All of interviewees consider it is important to develop professor's leadership skills. The reasons vary. P4 pointed out that, 'for a professor to be a good leader in his classroom and among his peers it is necessary to achieve genuine improvement of his leadership skill'. Besides that, some respondents, like P5, P7, P12, and P20 emphasized leadership will allow the professor to better manage his/her class and motivate his/her students.
To Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) professors who are leaders lead within and beyond the classroom, identify with and contribute to a community of professor learners and leaders, and influence others towards improved educational practice. These ideas were present in 13 of the interviewers. This demonstrates that they are really worried about this topic and understand that being a professor is more than teach lessons.
P17, P22 and P23 believe that faculty must be motivated to motivate, and they also point out that if professors develop leadership skills they will leverage the educational organization as well as student achievement (Crawford 2016;Epitropaki et al. 2017). So, it is clear that all interviewers agree with the importance of professor leadership development and give many suggestions and ideas that will be presented in the following items.

The roles for professor leaders
According to Harrison and Killion (2007), the main roles for professor leaders are: resource provider, instructional specialist, curriculum specialist, classroom supporter, learning facilitator, mentor, school leader, data coach, catalyst for change and learner. Don't need to be capitalized. Then, the participants were asked to rank these roles in order of importance. To this analysis were considered the three main roles pointed by the respondents. The chart 2 below illustrates the answers (Table 4).
The results show that the main roles for professor as leader are learning facilitator, resource provider, instructional specialist, and classroom supporter. These roles are presented in Table 2 in the literature review and go beyond those pointed out by Harrison and Killion (2007) and show the real need to develop leadership in the teaching staff since there are several roles developed by them. That is why these roles are necessary to considered in a program for professor leadership.
P2 which is one of the Brazilian interviewee points out that for him '[…] in general these are very important characteristics. Many relate, such as the ability to be a catalyst for change and a specialist, or a researcher. I would say that all are interdependent. […]'

The most relevant leadership skills
The literature points out some skills professors must develop to be a good leader. The participants ranked these skills in order of importance as presented in the chart below. Three main skills pointed by the respondents in this analysis were considered (Table 5).
These skills are also present in the study of Hathaway et al. (2017) and should be considered as steps to be developed in the teaching staff. One cannot generalize the result, each university should do a competency assessment to target its leadership development program, but these skills presented here can serve as a starting point.

Limitations and barriers in developing professor leadership
This last category presents the main limitations and barriers in developing professor leadership. The same criteria, as presented in the previous analysis, were asked   for the participants to rank these limitations and barriers in order of importance (Table 6). If one analyzes these limitations and barriers it is possible to notice that the main problems are lack of time and lack of organizational encouragement. Some participants also added that it is necessary to take into account the difficulty in freeing professors from duties, particularly ones not concerned to learning, but administrative and others. The results are aligned with the barriers presented by Richardson and Lynes (2007) and Fuertes and Sedlacek (1993) and should be analyzed in the context of each university, as they may not be perceived as such. Considering these results, in the next item will be presented a guideline to put these theories into practice.

Management contribution: guidelines for professor leadership development
In this item, we present the guidelines for faculty leadership development. This guideline will consider the theory based on Bennis (1996), Bennis and Nanus (1988), Cronshaw and Lord (1987) and Kempster, Table 7. Steps for leadership development (source: elaborated by the authors). 1st Step -The Gap The first step is to know the gap. It is important to know where we are and where we need to be. In other words, it is necessary To know the skills needed to be a leader, for this we can use the result presented in item 4.3.
To assess a professor's skills. To accomplish this, we can use many techniques such as: class observation, selfassessment, performance assessments, feedback, and so on 2nd Step -Motivation Both, the manager and the professors must be motivated. The manager because he/she will need to prioritize, invests money and time in the leadership development project and the professors because they need to know the benefits in developing professor leadership. So, it is necessary to use extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. We present some suggestions to motive the faculty Suggestions for professor motivation: Publicize the program to the professors Create workshops for discussion Think about rewards for the professors and let them know Show the usefulness of the process, like the use the training as a prerequisite for some tasks, or trips or visits in some important places as part of the program, etc Involve all the staff 3rd Step-Create an environment to develop professor leadership This third step is close to the second, maybe some actions can work for both, but the environment is also related to the infrastructure and some policies and procedures. According to the respondent's professors must trust their leaders first. They must also have incentives in order to aspire to a position of leadership. So, to this end we present some suggestions raised from the respondents' answers, as follows: One must have a place for at least an informal gathering Always check the needs of the workplace, even with the 'trivial' resources, like comfortable chairs, light, air conditioning. For this, it is a good idea to have one person in charge of infrastructure Create and promote a good atmosphere in the workplace Plan informal meetings to let the professor more comfortable Provide incentives and reward creative ideas Provide supervisor support Provide courses and workshops Plan and share the tasks among the faculty with some criteria in order to give all of them equal opportunities to develop their leadership skills 4th Step -Know the limitations and barriers We can use the results presented in Item 4.4. to analyze the limitations and barriers. Some participants raised some important topics to take into consideration, like the difficulty in freeing professors from duties, particularly ones not concerned to learning, but administrative and others The suggestion for the school manager is to discuss all the limitations and barriers with his/her staff and create strategies to overcome them 5th Step -Design This step is divided into two: development training and creating opportunity tasks or projects considered useful for the development of professor leadership Step -Evaluation During and after the professor leadership development project it is very important to evaluate. This is the last step, but it will provide feedback to improve the new process.
Here it is mandatory to evaluate the process and the professor who participate in one program or training We suggest some useful techniques: Student survey Colleague feedback (peer observation) Self-evaluation Stakeholder survey Jackson, and Conroy (2011). We analyzed these authors suggestions and the answers given by the participants. This way, to achieve the organizations' goals it is necessary to follow six steps as follows (Table 7).

Final remarks
The article addressed the importance of leadership development in professors, seeking to bring contributions that reinforce that how education, leadership, faculty development are key ingredients for country's human and socioeconomic development. So, this study presented the importance of faculty leadership development and raise some ideas for improving leadership in these professionals. To achieve these goals we surveyed professors and managers in order to see their perceptions and knowledge about leadership development.
Firstly we presented the importance of professor's leadership through the literature review, and following the methodology we analyzed the results. After all, based on Bennis (1996), Bennis and Nanus (1988), Cronshaw and Lord (1987) and Kempster, Jackson, and Conroy (2011) and considering the results we raised some ideas for improving leadership for these professionals to put the theories in practice.
The guideline has six steps and it must be understood as a guide, not as a rule. It is flexible and can and should be adapted to one's organization's context. Because the interview results and the suggestions of the interviewees do not take into account all the factors of each university. But yes, it should serve as a starting point, because it synthesizes ideas already consecrated by authors and are joined to the look of the management practice and teacher of the interviewees.
As limiting the research we must consider that the research is qualitative and as already discussed, the results should not be generalized. Therefore, as a suggestion for future research, we indicate the depth of this study in other universities. It is also suggested the development of a leadership instrument for the faculty. And we also suggest being developed quantitative research to increase the universe of interviewees and to deepen the study of the subject.
Finally, we have to take in consideration that providing the opportunity for professors to develop their leadership skills will allow them to have the chance of growth. They will be able to bring many ideas good ideas and opinions, for example, about creative practices applied in their classes that can be spread out among professors. In summary, the whole learning process will benefit.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).