Leadership best practices for sustaining quality in UK higher education from the perspective of the EFQM Excellence Model

Purpose To deepen the understanding and to encourage further research on leadership best practices for sustaining quality improvement in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). Design/methodology/approach The literature on leadership provides the theoretical context for the survey of quality managers from 42 UK HEIs. A mix of questionnaires, interviews, and hypothesis testing, was used to explore the critical factors for effective leadership and to obtain descriptive accounts of leadership best practices, which led to the development of a conceptual framework for effective leadership for academic quality. Findings Identifies and categorizes leadership practices into “weak”, “good”, “best”, and “excellent” on the basis of efficiency and effectiveness of each practice in sustaining academic quality improvement. It provides a conceptual framework for improving “weak” leadership practices. Research limitations/implications The exact nature of the association between “effective leadership” and sustainable “levels of academic quality improvement” has not been explained. This requires further research. International generalization of the findings would require the sample size of 42 UK HEIs to be extended to include institutions from other countries with similar education systems – such as the USA and Australia. Practical implications Academic quality planners will become more aware of the need to improve the tasks and activities constituting leadership processes. The emphasis on a structured approach to self‐assessment of leadership performance has the potential to reverse the ranking of leadership second to processes in UK HEIs. Originality/value It provides explicit definitions of “weak”, “good”, “best” and “excellent” leadership practices, which UK HEIs adopting the excellence model developed by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) may find useful in the assessment and improvement of leadership performance towards academic excellence.