Glocalization and the Development of a Hybrid Leadership Model

A Study of Chinese University Presidency

Qingyan Tian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367248901
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000213836
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

Through in-depth interviews with the presidents of major Chinese universities, this text explores the changing demands on leaders in Higher Education in the wake of globalization, and develops a contemporary model of Hybrid Leadership.

Glocalization and the Development of a Hybrid Leadership Model examines the leadership philosophies and practices of Chinese university presidents and presents new insights and perspectives on the meaning and practice of leadership in a global era. Drawing on data from a unique methodological process which integrates Western and Eastern approaches, chapters foreground the experiences of leaders in higher education to demonstrate how they perceive and balance diverse and potentially conflicting local and global demands, and ensure effective leadership by combining leadership philosophies and practices from local and global contexts. Ultimately, this informs the development of new model of leadership characterized by the hybridization of the global and local at the contextual and personal levels, and marked by global competency, multiple cultural and sectoral mindsets, and geographically adaptable skill sets.

Challenging and enriching the existing theories of leadership for higher education, this text will be of interest to scholars, post-graduate students and academics in the fields of educational leadership, international and comparative education, higher education, and leadership studies. It will also be of interests to the practitioners of leadership in general and higher education leadership in particular.

Part I
Introduction and Overview

1
The World of Globalization and Localization Calls for Glocal Leadership

The World Context: Globalization

We are living in an increasingly globalized world. Even if we haven’t traveled the globe, the globe has come to us (Thomas & Inkson, 2017; Thomas & Peterson, 2017). To many, the global village we live in is characterized by the compression of time and space, the interconnectivity of every sphere of human life, rapid technology advancements, and invisible but prevalent cultural differences (Thomas & Inkson, 2017). Regardless of how many differences we have, the world of interconnectivity requires us to cooperate (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010). Globalization is “a process whereby worldwide interconnections in virtually every sphere of activity are growing. Some of these interconnections lead to integration/unity worldwide; others do not” (Thomas & Peterson, 2015, p. 3). Specifically, globalization influences our life in five dimensions: economic, human, cultural, political, and technological.

Economic globalization indicates a “financescapes” phenomenon (Appadurai, 2006, pp. 468–472), or the free flow of capital, goods, workers, and investments across national borders (Burbules & Torres, 2000, p. 14). The result is that the world economy is becoming increasingly interconnected. For example, there are many trade agreements involving multiple nations in the world, and the numbers of multinational corporations are increasing. According to Greer and Singh (2000), since 1970, parent transnational corporations increased from 7,000 to 38,000. Ninety percent of these companies are headquartered in the industrialized countries and control more than 207,000 global subsidiaries. These companies cannot function without working globally.

Human globalization indicates an “ethnoscapes” phenomenon (Appadurai, 2006, pp. 468–472), or the increased volume of human migration and mobility across national borders (Bauman, 1998; Thomas & Inkson, 2017). Globalization brings about interactions and relationships between people who are culturally different. Thus, the trend of human migration globally is growing. According to the International Migration Report (2017), the number of international migrants reached 258 million in 2017. Some of these migrants travel for transnational jobs; some seek better life opportunities (e.g., international students); some attempt to escape death, hunger, and repression (e.g., refugees); and some commit crimes across national borders (e.g., terrorists).

Cultural globalization indicates the phenomena of “mediascapes” and “ideascapes” (Appadurai, 2006, pp. 468–472), or the increased communication and exchange of ideas across national borders. As a result, national cultures have become more similar, different, and hybridized (Pieterse, 2009; Young, 2006). In other words, cultural homogenization, cultural heterogenization (Appadurai, 2006), and hybrid cultures all coexist. For example, the culture of McDonald’s has been spread all over the world, sometimes even mixing American flavors with local ones. Sushi, which originated in Japan, has become very popular beyond Japan. Bollywood hybridizes American and Indian music, songs, and dances. In addition, the American ideologies of liberty and freedom are flowing all over the world.

Political globalization can be described as “a certain loss of nation-state sovereignty, or at least the erosion of national autonomy, and, correspondingly, a weakening of the notion of the ‘citizen’ as a unified and unifying concept, a concept that can be characterized by precise roles, rights, obligations, and status” (Burbules & Torres, 2000, p. 14). With the cross-border movements of money, human beings, and ideologies, politics can no longer be confined within national boundaries. Events happening in one country affect other countries, requiring collaborative efforts between the global and the local. For instance, the most recent U.S.–Iran–Iraq conflict has affected not only the three countries involved but also the entire world, particularly the Middle East. To prevent the problem from getting worse (i.e., a possible war), many countries such as China, Russia, France, and other European countries as well as world organizations such as the United Nations started to work together with the three countries involved to find peaceful solutions. COVID-19 began in China and spread to many countries throughout the world. Controlling it required the collaboration of supranational organizations and national governments from many countries. Today, more and more summit meetings are being held, where national leaders from around the world assemble to solve problems with implications for global communities.

All of these transnational movements are aided by technology. Technological globalization indicates a “technoscapes” phenomenon (Appadurai, 2006, pp. 468–472), or the flow and advancement of technology across national borders, thus facilitating political, economic, human, and cultural globalization. Technology has transformed both the method and speed of communication; it links people together instantly. Whatever happens in one location is quickly known and reacted to in other locations.

Globalization has both advantages and disadvantages for human societies. On one hand, political, economic, cultural, human, and technology interconnectivity creates opportunities for nations to learn from and support one another despite their differences. It can also help nations share resources and power collectively across the world to tackle global and local problems. With mutual support and understanding, we can leverage this interconnectivity to create a world of peace, love, and prosperity. On the other hand, globalization also has its dark side. War, nuclear weapon competition, terrorism, drug dealing, human trafficking, religious hatred, energy war, disease, and the polarization of wealth and power are also global in scope, thus harming more people and nations than ever before.

In other words, globalization is a very complex phenomenon. Some perceive globalization as a totalitarian process, where the national cultures and identities yield to the most powerful nation’s cultures and ideologies and where the nations in the world become more and more similar regarding values, ideologies, and identities. However, in the process of globalization, local resistance cannot be ignored. Globalization and localization are twins. Although the world is becoming more globalized, to a large degree, it is also becoming more localized. In fact, a third condition emerges: a hybridity of the global and the local. Also, these multiple dimensions of globalization do not have a harmonious relationship. The disjointed political, economic, cultural, human, and technological dimensions of globalization add even more complexities to the world and to human life (Appadurai, 2006, pp. 468–472).

All of these dimensions of globalization have had strong impacts on higher education (Altbach, 2016; Altbach, Reisberg, & Rumbley, 2009), specifically manifesting through an agenda of neoliberalism. Embracing market value as the core ethics for all human actions, neoliberalism has become a dominant thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so (Harvey, 2007). Due to neoliberalism’s core value of market behavior, state intervention in the economy is minimized and financial support to higher education is reduced. As a result, higher education has become more and more a commodity where commercialization, privatization, and marketization are trending (Altbach, Reisberg, & Rumbley, 2010). These trends are turning universities into entrepreneurial “McUniversities,” where universities all over the world compete with one another (Lorenz, 2006, p. 12), resulting in the emerging academic capitalism (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). These market-driven universities are seeking standardization (i.e., of institutions, managers, academics, and students), managerial power, efficiency, accountability, and rankings (Lorenz, 2006, pp. 13–14). In these “enterprise” universities, the faculty and administrators can be called “entrepreneurs,” while the real entrepreneurs become the “stakeholders” of the “McUniversities” (p. 15). With these challenges from globalization, universities are rapidly changing, constantly being restructured, and adopting practices more commonly found in businesses (Currie, 1998). Globalization has brought into today’s universities less government funding, increasing technoscience, a focus on intellectual property development, and more involvement with multinational companies. This restructuring encompasses less personal capitalist competition in a deregulated environment, thus enhancing global trends in local communities (Burbules & Torres, 2000). In responding to these global imperatives, higher education systems in many countries adopted internationalization as a strategy (Burbules & Torres, 2000). The internationalization of higher education typically includes sending students to study abroad, setting up a branch campus overseas, engaging interinstitutional partnership (Altbach et al., 2009, p. iv), and internationalizing the curriculum. Many countries’ universities also internationalize their leaders as a strategy to cope with the forces of globalization. My years of working with university presidents all over the world reinforced that this phenomenon is real. Countries, especially developing ones, have been promoting or developing leaders with global experiences and competencies as strategies for advancing their societies.

For some, the impact of globalization on higher education offers exciting new opportunities because universities can collaborate across national boundaries. For others, it is a threat to national culture and autonomy (Altbach et al., 2009, p. v). While expanding higher education’s capacity for many countries, globalization has also brought inequality to the world’s higher education systems and increased the tension between the center and peripheries of the world. The center, the developing countries, has had more resources and therefore more power to impose their standards on peripheral (developing) countries; therefore, to compete, peripheries have attempted to build world-class universities based on the center’s criteria, which favors universities from the English-speaking world (Altbach et al., 2009, p. v). All these factors create a disadvantage for higher education in developing countries, for as they expand their physical structure and enrollment capacity, they experience a loss of core academic quality (Altbach et al., 2009, p. vi). This may be why, regardless of any perceived disadvantages, local resistance at a variety of levels still takes place to protect public education from unrestrained market forces (Burbules & Torres, 2000). In these ways, globalization’s influences on higher education has created a multitude of effects on higher education policies and practices (Burbules & Torres, 2000).

All of these complexities resulting from globalization have made global, national, and organizational environments more complex, more dynamic, more uncertain, and more competitive than ever before (Thomas & Inkson, 2017). The increasing velocity and unfiltered, frictionless flow of everything everywhere has made the leadership environment challenging, volatile, and ambiguous. Therefore, we have a shortage of global leaders, and today’s leadership skills will not be sufficient for tomorrow’s leadership environment (Black, Morrison, & Gregersen, 1999; Osland, 2013).

In the context of higher education in particular, the interconnected and multifaceted nature of globalization has increased the need for effective global leadership (Ramos, 2005). Unlike corporations that ventured into the global village to maximize their market and profit (Livermore, 2015), higher education has historically operated more within national boundaries serving the national interests and strengthening national ideologies. However, globalization is breaking down the doors of higher education, and the challenges and solutions of a nation’s higher education can no more be confined within that nation’s borders. “We are living in an age of globalization when higher education becomes a passport for the globalized economy, and the problems universities can solve become borderless and require the collective efforts of international communities” (Herman, 2007, p. 3). Therefore, leaders of higher education desperately need global competencies such as the ability to work effectively in international settings; awareness of and adaptability to diverse cultures, perceptions, and approaches; familiarity with the major currents of global change and the issues they raise; and the capacity for effective communications across cultural and linguistic boundaries (Brustein, 2007).

Nowhere is the need for leaders with global competencies becoming more important and crucial than in China, a country emerging from isolation and rapidly becoming a major world player and power.

The Chinese Context: Globalization and Localization

In China’s case, the dualities of the global and the local go hand in hand, forming a very complex matrix of context. While responding to global imperatives, Chinese leadership is also responding to its national context. The national context is a result of a dynamic interaction between global forces, Chinese realities, and people’s choices. As mentioned previously, although globalization is taking place (Burbules & Torres, 2000, p. 18) and exerting influences on many aspects of national life, the national responses to its imperatives are not merely passive; in fact, active and passive resistance and responses operate in tandem. For example, some developing countries, such as China and Malaysia, “have become increasingly suspicious of globalization” (Burbules & Torres, 2000, p. 17). While desiring some of the benefits of participation in a global economy and an exchange of goods and information, these two countries have been trying “to find ways to constrain its [globalization’s] effect on their national way of life” (Burbules & Torres, 2000, p. 17).

Socialism With Chinese Characteristics: A Unique Development Model

When Deng Xiaoping and his followers opened China to the outside world in the 1980s, the country realized that it was falling far behind the world, particularly the Western world. Economically, the country was in extreme poverty as a consequence of the Cultural Revolution (1968–1978), when productivity was reduced to a minimum. Politically, it was suffocating due to Zedong Mao’s strong-handed leadership. Culturally, it was dominated by Mao’s socialist norms adopted from Marxism and the former Soviet Union. Traditional values were removed, at least at the superficial/official level; thus, Chinese culture became very homogenous.

In this situation, China desired to re-enter the world, which required it to meet the world standard defined by Western countries. In order to benefit from, but not be victimized by, the forces of globalization, China developed broad strategies and approaches for development under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. The following three statements proposed by Deng Xiaoping capture vividly the essence of these strategies: 1) explore a socialist way of development with Chinese characteristics; 2) it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white; what matters is that it catches mice; and 3) cross the river by touching the stones in it (Huang, 2005). On one hand, these strategies show that because economic development was seen as the only way for China to become a world player, China would do everything it could to accelerate this. On the other hand, China did not want to lose its national identity. Therefore, the Chinese people were willing to take the risk of exploring a new development model that would fit into the new context of globalization and localization.

Specifically, Deng Xiaoping called for rejuvenating China through science, technology, and education. Under the overall guidelines proposed, China created a unique development model called “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The main ideas of this model include the socialist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Preface
• Part I Introduction and Overview
• Part II Hybrid Presidential Roles
• Part III A Hybrid Leadership Model
• References
• Index