Academic Leadership Among Department Heads in Sabah, Malaysia: A Quantitative Study on Staff’s Perceptions
Abstract
Aligning higher education with national development goals, academic leadership drives institutional transformation, promoting instructional quality and intellectual achievement, besides elevating organizational commitment, research output, and institutional rankings. The purpose of this study was to examine staffs’ perceptions of academic leadership in Sabah, Malaysia. The sample consisted of 57 administrative and teaching staff from two PHEIs in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, who completed the Academic Leadership Questionnaire on Google Forms. Responses were subsequently transferred onto a spreadsheet and SPSS 29.0 was used to analyze the data. Findings showed that only low to low-average proportions of PHEI staff tend to perceive their department heads as academic leaders. Further, ANOVA indicated nonsignificant gender and age differences in perceived academic leadership. Lastly, Wilcoxon signed rank test, based on a hypothesized value of 3.5, revealed that 13 of the academic leadership items were significantly different from the hypothesized median at p < 0.001, while only two were significantly different from the hypothesized median at p < 0.05. In light of the findings some recommendations were made on ways that PHEIs could incorporate academic leadership elements in their everyday management.
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