Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia
Existing leadership frameworks have proposed a range of leadership behaviours that are deemed to define an effective leader. The present study focuses on leadership behaviours that underpin effective leadership in the context of Malaysian public universities. It proposes that senior executives in universities adopt distinctive sets of leadership behaviours when undertaking their roles in different aspects of academic leadership. Empirical findings showed that leader behaviours of relating to people, leading change, managing processes and producing results have significant positive relationships with academic staff perceptions of leadership effectiveness. Furthermore, an emphasis on relating to people and producing results are found to be the dominant predictors of senior executive leadership effectiveness.
Keywords: leader behaviour, leadership effectiveness, Malaysia public universities