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How Universities Work: The Way Of Thinking Of Moral Leadership

Posted on:2006-08-01Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:P PengFull Text:PDF
GTID:1117360182971705Subject:Higher Education
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The rise of moral leadership in the 90s of the 20th century presents us a new thinking horizon for university governance with morality and also indicates a reform trend of university leadership practice. Some in-depth and systematic research done on moral governance in the perspective of moral leadership is not only a theoretical consciousness of creating new Chinese universities based on moral governance, but also a theoretical identification on adapting moral leadership to Chinese traditional moral governance and modern university developmental trend. The goal is to construct Chinese moral university with a modern spirit and an open eyesight. This research is of great theoretical value and practical significance, which helps to unveil the features of university as an organization and university activity so as to further understand and realize the essence of university, which helps to call on us to focus on moral leadership and inherit and develop traditional culture of moral governance so as to enrich the research on higher educational management to some degree, and which also helps to look closely at the shortage of traditional leadership so as to reconstruct the university leadership structure and advance the leadership strategy. The dissertation explores the rise of moral leadership as the starting point, traces the evolutionary history of traditonal leadership in the context of scientific positivism, analyses the heckling on the traditional theory caused by post-modernism, on the basis of which it studies the meaning of moral leadership and concluds that university moral leadership is a behavior or process of universtiy governance based on morality. On the basis of moral and professional authority, leaders discriminate and establish core values and ethic culture making university as a learning community, construct a common vision and idea, take advantage of leader substitutes to stimulate human potential in order to make inferiors become followers and then let them response to shared values,ideas and vision based on obligation and duty, justice and goodness, and create a moral university and realize the goal in the end. The establishment and development of moral-leadership theory is founded on the academic reasons. Thus the dissertation tries to analyse and put academic reasons of moral leadership in order from the mult-demension of humanity, pedagogy, organizational behavior and ethics.And then it makes a conclusion that the presuppostion of university moral leadership about human nature surrounds "cultural man" and "learning man ", that the educational value and mission of fostering man of universtiy leadership priscribes the leader's moral voice, that universtiy organization culture as a symbol reflects the social value of organization which combines members and the process for leaders to shape organizational culture is the process to practice moral leadership, that university leadership is a moral culture embodying the ethical features clearly and university leadership should be carried out according to certain ethical principles and requirements. This research criticizes the limitations and shortcomings of the bureaucratic leadership, which are regarded as the practical conditions to practice moral leadership. It points out that with the development of times, university's bureaucratic leadership cannot interpret or solve the problems of modern university education and management both in application technique and expalining efficiency, and that bureaucratic leadership fails for instrumental rationalism repels the influx of positive moral value. In the university leadership practice, instrumental rationalism must be transcended and moral leadership must be in. Meanwhile, modern university is a comples one incorporating bureaucracy, peers, politics and symbolic structures. Thus moral leadership should be put in the foremost place to construct the ideal map of modern university leadership structure. Ethics is the practical wisdom and leadership is the philosophic activity. To make clear and realize unversity moral leadership is to guide the practice in the end. Thus at the end of the dissertation, it discusses the principles and methods of how to execute moral leadership on the basis of some questionnaire investigation and in-depth interview and concluds that the realization of moral leadership depends on two keys: the moralization of university leadership institution and university leaders' moralization.
Keywords/Search Tags:University, Moral governance, Moral leadership
PDF Full Text Request
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