Leading for Research Excellence: Presidential Capabilities and Institutional Performance in Chinese Higher Education

IF 2.8 Q1 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY Pub Date : 2025-06-16 DOI:10.1111/hequ.70032

Yueyan Dong, Jiazheng Wu, Nannan Yu

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Abstract

Understanding how institutional leadership influences research productivity is crucial for advancing higher education policy and practice, yet empirical evidence remains limited in non-Western contexts. Drawing on upper echelons theory and a longitudinal dataset spanning 20 years (2000–2019) of 392 presidential appointments across Chinese universities, this study examines how presidential capabilities affect institutional research performance. Our findings demonstrate that presidential capabilities—measured through educational background, international experience, and academic achievements—significantly enhance research output, with effects varying across institutional contexts. The impact is most pronounced in second-tier research universities and shows stronger effects in economically developed regions and centrally administered institutions. These results contribute to understanding leadership effectiveness in higher education by highlighting how institutional contexts moderate presidential influence, offering valuable insights for leadership selection and development in higher education institutions.

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领导卓越研究：中国高等教育的校长能力与机构绩效

了解机构领导如何影响研究生产力对于推进高等教育政策和实践至关重要，但在非西方背景下，经验证据仍然有限。本研究利用上层梯队理论和跨越20年（2000-2019）的中国高校392位校长任命的纵向数据集，探讨了校长能力如何影响机构研究绩效。我们的研究结果表明，总统的能力——通过教育背景、国际经验和学术成就来衡量——显著提高了研究产出，其影响在不同的制度背景下有所不同。这种影响在二线研究型大学中最为明显，在经济发达地区和中央管理机构中表现出更强的效应。这些结果通过强调制度背景如何调节总统的影响，有助于理解高等教育中的领导力有效性，为高等教育机构的领导力选择和发展提供有价值的见解。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH-

CiteScore

4.50

自引率

9.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Higher Education Quarterly publishes articles concerned with policy, strategic management and ideas in higher education. A substantial part of its contents is concerned with reporting research findings in ways that bring out their relevance to senior managers and policy makers at institutional and national levels, and to academics who are not necessarily specialists in the academic study of higher education. Higher Education Quarterly also publishes papers that are not based on empirical research but give thoughtful academic analyses of significant policy, management or academic issues.