Leadership Imperatives in the Arab-American University Essay

leaders in a school of higher and advanced learning such as the Arab-Ameri base University requires collaborative and confrontational ch eitherenges with a number of issues, typical merely non limited to that of all(prenominal) educational foot.Such issues as cultural diversity, inclusivity, gifted activities such as research and instruction, social involvements such as friendship annexe services, students affairs, finance, marketing, st rankgic vexation models, organisational theories, profitability and sh atomic number 18holder value, governmental and social congruencies and differences, among differents, often create deep chasms to and between the various school sectors that be ironically bound by a common suggest role education. This is made more than demanding when Arab and American views are compoundd in a single community.What unique leadership and trouble model therefore would apply infra such a sensitive configuration? What insecurity management int ervention would constantly prevail? What residual risks or synergy, if any, would be evident? Leadership and management in an educational institution are perhaps among the most formal, sensitive and confrontational roles a professional can assume. Business organizations established for profit are far easier managed and led as there is that surround and mandate of compliance required of every employee found on employment contracts and agreements.This compliance system gives the managing director the elbow board to adopt an organizational approach under a supposition x or y scenario. Admittedly, discip business line under an entrepreneurial undertaking is demanded principally to meet shareholder value targets and for survival secondarily. Universities are considered more complicated than most organizational systems as they demand the most professional fulfilles than any other institution. Schools are assumed to be the fount and cradle of learning, consequently a strong exemp lary modeling of instructors and administrators are always the face of intensive scrutiny among other sectors.Would this university therefore require a business-like management style or an organization leadership mix that is as melted as the socio-cultural and political dimensions? . In an age where socio-cultural and political diversities are temperized with the widest spectra and extremes, the makeup of an Arab-American intellectual Mecca can be expected to require the most unabated professional and socio-cultural leadership anywhere. This study would be interested in identifying celestial spheres of coaction while handleing confrontational issues and risks along the process.Similarly, the relevance of this study along multicultural settings in complex and diverse forms and in highly professional environment would transcend, nonetheless revolutionize all assumptions, hypothesis and in time all forms of propositions astir(predicate) multicultural biases. Brief history o f the Arab-American University The Arab-American University (AAU) was established in 1973 as non-sectarian, non-profit and non-government institution of higher learning. Its primary purpose is to address the educational selects of Arab-Americans scratch from preschool to basic, secondary, higher education, to graduate and post-graduate levels.Among its goals and objectives include providing full scholarships to families of indigent just now intellectually capable members of the Arab-American community in a specific area with a relatively high density of Arab-American families. While the university accepts Muslim students, it also caters to students from other religious and cultural denominations and groups.. The university is in the first place a combination of a business college strongly oriented towards information technology and engineering courses, both(prenominal) adept and baccalaureate degrees.The university is composed of seven schools the Schools of Business Managemen t, Hospitality Management, Accountancy, care for and Midwifery, Medicine, Arts, semipolitical and the Social Sciences, Polytechnic Institute composed of the Departments of Architecture, Computer Science, Electronic communications Engineering, Civil and windup(prenominal) Engineering and Fine Arts, its flagship programs includes Accountancy where it ranks among the cash in ones chips 50 business schools in the United States, Electronics Communications Engineering, Nursing, Hospitality Management and Mechanical Engineering.All seven schools are verticalized with their respective graduate schools. As of the family 2008, the university boasted a population of 30,000 highly selected students and scholars from 25 states and 15 countries mostly from the marrow East and Asian countries. Its student population increases by an average of 15 per cent and expected to hit 50,000 by 2012. Presently, it maintains two campuses the Chicago and Urbana Campuses, distributively with its own cha rter and separate sets of staff. All courses are offered in both campuses.For the get going three years, AAU has garnered a number of academic awards, including twelve top researches awards in Accountancy, Computer Sciences, Nursing, Electronic Communications Engineering Awards. As of celestial latitude 31, 2008, the school started to become consistent in its passing rate for the Accountancy, Nursing and Engineering courses all averaging about 80 per cent against the national average of 40 per cent. For nursing, AAU has started to register a 100 per cent passing rate in the Nursing Board Examinations.All colleges and schools in the university are betokened by a Dean of the College and are assisted by a misdeed Dean with a pool of Academic Chairs for each of the courses or major league within the college. A Faculty secretary is the administrative officer of each college or school and must be a holder of a doctors degree in any of the courses in the college where he or she is ass igned. The faculty secretary is the point person of every college but maintains a built-in six units of academic load in admission to his full-time administrative work.The university boasts of complete state of the art facilities for all of its science laboratory classes including its basic education department. Its library is one of the most complete, up-to-date libraries in the world with the most comprehensive collection of traditional and electronic materials. During the last five years, the university has been the recipient of awards for excellence in community involvement and extension services. Its research center laboratory enjoys an endowment fund from where it trains and maintains its pool of researchers from the ranks of the faculty.Leadership Efficiency and Effectiveness and the primary divulge concepts adopted in the university ripe like any school of advanced learning, the university is a complex organization that adheres to the mission, vision, goals and objective s it has demanded from itself and its academic and non-academic employees the highest standards of professionalism, responsiveness, community involvement, strong, visible and dynamic research-orientations and the disciplinary but condole with kin maintained with the students of all levels.To be effective and efficient, the university periodically take a firm stand its look at to formalize and communicate its strategicalal, tactical and operational plan in the same other victorful organizations do. (Robbins, 2003). Looking ahead and beyond the authorized situations in the industry, (in this case the education sector) brings uncertainties and risks into the open and allows the organization a turn over marrow of managing, confronting and even avoiding those uncertainties and risks. (Shaw,2003).The university makes sure that it conducts its strategic be after session yearly before the onset of the succeeding year in time for translating the strategic level into the tactical c omponent as well as operationalizing the tactical level. (Anthony & Govindarajan, 2001). Similarly, AAU never lead astrays to conduct an evaluation and assessment of its preset plans as meaning of determining where it is and what constraining and enabling factors it is experiencing. (Atkinson et al, 2003).This evaluation additionally renders the university an effective means of addressing change (Koller as cited by Robbins, 2003). These planning and change management processes articulates AAUs argument of leadership under inherent socio-cultural complexities by means of clear visioning and communication initiatives to all its stakeholders that for many years, have been encouraged to actively participate in the planning sessions. This has greatly contributed to the overwhelming atmosphere of professionalism in the university.The senior administrators of AAU may not have formal training on complexity management, but their organizational leadership styles enable the attainment of a n enviable cohesiveness as a team with a common purpose of being that of addressing ignorance and mediocrity where they are holded. AAUs uniqueness stems from its capability to harness its management with the leadership character to instill regulatory and policy compliance without having to assert authority and index finger in between (House cited by Robbins, 2003).It is surprising that even under longing pressure to compete and manage the scarce resources provided endowment the AAU is able to integrate the sensitive and complex balance scorecard approach in its strategic decision making. (Kaplan & Norton, 2004). The university attributes this success factor on its priority for choosing its leaders under the trait theory that focuses on the personal qualities along charisma, exemplary modeling, attitude, devotion and even personal traits common to both cultures as courage and determination.(Robbins,2003). patronage rigorous studies on identifying leadership traits for its manage ment, supervisory and staff positions, the university correlates traits such as drive and ambition, integrity which includes honesty and sincerity, competence along knowledge and skills and even sense of sacrifice. (Robbins,2003). The university however, continues to experience a dearth of this type of managers with the leadership dimension due to the expansion and establishment of similar institutions outside of the United States.Thus, mindful of this constraint, AAU emphasizes its executive and management development training programs to prepare the transition of its key people towards the great demand for exemplary modeling (DelaTorre, 2006) that is, managers and leaders who took initiatives to address the personal needs of the employees as means of making them more juicy in the process. (Robbins, 2003). The university seldom experiences the risks of the groupthink factor (Shafritz & Ott on Janis,1992) as it respects the need for all decision makers to be extremely knowledgeabl e and skilled in the decision making processes.Being a part of its strategic objectives, the yearbook development programs encourage AAU employees to be continuously motivated, through the behavioral theory approach, effectively deciding as a team in addressing organizational objectives. This motivational drive expands the employees horizons and capabilities towards job satisfaction and sustainable learning and emersion of its human being capital (Kaplan & Norton, 2003). As a result, AAU has achieved in just 25 years what other universities tried to accomplish in a speed of light and under the most challenging multicultural scenarios.On one hand, the leadership and management mix being adopted in the university guarantees and assure potency of units and people towards autonomy and self-regulation. This is granted after intensive training on decision making and university processes that includes appreciation and utilization of marketing researches and theories in corroborate of policy formulation and implementation. The immense authorities and power abandoned curiously to the respective heads of offices, primarily the Deans of Colleges and Schools, are always tempered with management harbor systems to guide all decisions towards achievement of goals every inch of the way.The resultant reliable brass, control and transparency outcomes of this empowerment initiatives unburdens the senior management with operational concerns, thereof allowing this level a clear focus on the strategic charge of the university and strengthening its social and political influence through good governance and risk management processes (Shaw,2003) On the other hand, the administrative efficiency has been splendidly adopted through particular(prenominal)ization and responsibility accounting that enables units to address issues at every level strengthening the span of control while commission tasks towards a specific class of clients, concerns and even the university campus designated purposely for the educational services. (Shafrits & Ott on Simon, 1992).The leadership styles and practices exercised by the AAU stakeholder group are creating new levels of efficiency and persuasiveness in the hierarchy and creating precedents as well as new theories to release in the realm of university value-based (Koller, 1994) management and organizational leadership. These new learning and increase perspectives have revolutionized the balanced scorecard (Horngren et al, 2000) and stakeholder principles (DelaTorre, 2006) with an exemplary mix of leadership innovations. patronage the control risks that mix might be spawned by the staff turnovers go through during the last few years, the university has maintained a loyalty index of more than ten years among its people. This is a sustainability plus factor in human resource management of the school. Other key principles and concepts adoptedIn the area of instruction, research and extension services for example, exc ellence in the classroom is primarily driven by a strongly motivated select members of the faculty pool whose training and development focus is based on reorient the needs of the teachers with the needs of the university. This congruency theory in objectives (DelaTorre, 2006) allows for mutual and beneficial relationship between faculty providers and students. The intervention theory (Shafrits & Ott on Argyris, 1992) in organizations demands a strong mental hygiene approach (Rogers & Roethlisberger, 2000) to communications. The theory presupposes the presence of a picky relationship between people to enable openness and transparency among constituents.Teachers demonstration this practice in terms of open and complementary student advising and centering sessions not only as part of the intervention process but a critical part of the formation process in education. Students need and demand attention in the form of interventions especially in rocky and complex scenarios they find themselves in the process of earning a degree. Thus this psychotherapy theory helps in providing a strong motivational environment in the classroom opens avenues for students to be creative and enthusiastic about their career plans. Secondarily, this special attention given to student clientele becomes a strong promotional and marketing tool for the university in attracting students even from those school already established.The need for any intensive advertising and marketing efforts to project the identity of the schools are addressed by the students themselves who become informal marketing and testimonial proofs of quality education. This has expanded the market of the university even to those non-Arab-Americans who appreciate the philosophy that the school articulates and manifests through its graduates. Managing and leading a university in the current socio-economic environment becomes problematic even under the various principles of organization (Shafritz and Ott on Cohen and March, 1992). These anarchic ambiguities of purpose, power, experience and success can render even the most competent university president to fail in some circumstances in due time. Thus the management and organizational leadership mix is both critical and mandatory.This allows the president to haul the appropriate management and leadership tool at a given situation and scenario and exert and even allow certain precedent-setting decisions to effect changes with the to the lowest degree minimum resistance or optimum cooperation. Thus, inability along this line runs the risk of getting confused with his leadership character or manager authority or some hybrid in between. For AAU, the consultation process with the constituents and stakeholders becomes the medium by which decision critical to every office heads functions are articulated. This explores the best idea possible while addressing and dissipating potence resistance to any innovations and measures not easily understood or ap preciated.