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This work investigates the reasons for the influence of two rival nineteenth century ideologies on contemporary ideas of the university. Liberal Learning IS associated with learning for its own sake, scholastic control of academic standards, and personal freedom. Utilitarianism emphasises knowledge production for wealth creation, subject based degrees offered within faculties of learning and postgraduate studies.

This thesis considers the issue of good practice in learning and teaching within one higher education institution in England and links it to the development of academic professional identity. The research examines the extent to which it is possible to identify such practice and whether this has implications for the importance of the subject, the notion of academic identity or the professionalism of the academic. The thesis suggests a model for the way in which an academic's professional identity, comprising both research and teaching, develops. The relationship between academics and Quality Assurance systems is considered, raising issues around pedagogic practices within academic disciplines and the notion of communities of practice. The changing nature of academic work in higher education, including the development of "Quality" systems as responses to policy initiatives (especially the move from Assurance towards Enhancement), are discussed in relation to their impact upon academic identity. The thesis considers the methods used to conduct the primary research and the ontological issues surrounding the choice of research tools. Three key foci are identified from the data: A Staff focus where academics work independently, improving their knowledge and delivery to their students, with potential promotion prospects. A Subject focus where academics' professional identities are defined by their discipline, although some develop multiple identities including working collegially with non-specialists. A Student focus where the academic is a subject advocate and student facilitator, developing their practice accordingly. Finally the limitations, applications and implications of the primary research are considered. Conclusions surrounding the research and field questions are made, as are connections back into the relevant literature especially the policy drivers behind the rise of the Quality movement, the contested notion of good practice, the changing power relationships within the teaching-research nexus and the challenge to academic identity and allegiance to the subject.

Research pooling refers to a new form of collaboration between higher education (HE) institutions in Scotland under the auspices of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) in which research resources in specific areas are shared, or pooled, across Scotland with the aim of enhancing research competitiveness. This thesis is a study of research pooling as a policy initiative. It suggests that the policy initiative warrants examination because it is a highly innovative policy that introduced new structures, relationships and practices in HE in Scotland. Moreover it did so through a collaborative policy process that appears at odds with the recent highly competitive and selective framing of policy in Europe and the UK. The thesis contrasts research pooling with policy solutions pursued in England and argues that it offers a distinctive approach to developing and sustaining world-class research in the global knowledge society, and (post-RAE 2008) has the characteristics of a successful policy development that attracted widespread support. This prompts a number of questions addressed in the thesis about the development of the policy in Scotland, including the importance of the specific policy context, the significance of the timing of the policy development; and questions about why it developed so quickly. In more general terms, the thesis also considers the significance of the development of research pooling policy for our understanding of the steering of research and higher education in globalising contexts. Thus the thesis is informed by literature on globalisation, particularly that which is attentive to the interaction between the global and local. It also engages with the policy imperatives of building global knowledge societies and economies, and the 'travelling' policies they engender. It considers the significance of embedded factors in the 'local' Scottish context; and how these play out in academic culture and in tension with managerialism. Finally the thesis connects to the theme of governance of research and higher education through consideration of aspects of the operation of policy networks and policy communities. The methodology of the thesis is interpretive and works with the idea of a policy 'narrative' that allows the actors to 'speak' for themselves, constructing a narrative of the process of policy formation as they wish to present it. The methodology assumes that each of the actors represented in the data is mobilising particular resources in order to promote and maintain their individual and collective interests. Thus, the analysis interprets these narratives with attention to the work they do in protecting and maintaining power. Semi-structured interviews with sixteen actors from Scottish Government, SFC, universities and other HE bodies generated data that were then analysed as 'interpretations of interpretations'. The approach illuminates the 'assumptive worlds' of policy-makers, and their emergent networks in the context of post-devolution policy for HE in Scotland. The analysis of the data suggests that research pooling, as a policy initiative, contrasts with much recent policy in HE in the UK, as it works with the grain of academic culture and appeals to ideas of self-determination, autonomy and sovereignty within the academic community. 'Hard' forms of managerialism and governance were rejected in favour of 'soft' governance, drawing people into the policy process, and the policy network was characterised by trust relationships and high levels of personal commitment. This may be seen as a highly developed form of network governance. It also highlights the significance of cultural and political context in the translation of global imperatives into local contexts.

The concept of leadership has become of considerable importance in the development of policy and practice in educational settings (Bennett, Crawford and Cartwright, 2003). For universities leadership is a key issue and, at a time of major change, is increasingly regarded as beneficial to improved performance across all activities. Research by academics is one area where discussions are often couched in terms of leadership. This study investigated research undertaken by university academics and took the leadership of research as its theme. The aim of this research was to develop a deeper understanding of the role of leadership as it relates to research by university academics. To this end a critical review of the literature was undertaken to examine the university context and concepts and theories of research and leadership. Through two case studies a particular focus was given to the leadership of hospitality university academics in research. More specifically the objectives of the study were: To examine the university and hospitality management education contexts and theconcepts of research and leadership. To conceptualise and theorise leadership for university research. To investigate leadership in hospitality management research at the subject group level and to explore the leadership activities of recognised research leaders. To evaluate perceived factors which influence research leadership. To field test the relevance of research leadership to the conduct of research. The primary research employed a qualitative research design and a case study strategy was adopted. Twenty semistructured face-to-face interviews were conducted with a range of academics from heads of school to lecturers in a pre-1992 and a post-1992 university. The findings derived from interview transcripts, the review of documentary materials and the analysis of reflective notes. Detailed insights and examples of academic leadership in universities were revealed and new ways of thinking about research leadership developed. A view of research leadership emerged which included that research leadership is important; the context of leadership is crucial; leadership is both formal and informal and varies according to social systems; that it is dispersed; that self-leadership exists; that it is complex and possesses many relationship patterns and that it is concerned with the leadership of people and the leadership of the subject. One of the main conclusions is that the presence of formal research leaders in universities does not mean that the leadership of academics in research will occur. Furthermore, any leadership of university academics in research is often accidental. This implies that a planned approach to the leadership of academics in research requires attention being afforded to the role and practices of the formal research leader.

The concept of skill has become increasingly important in the discourse of education over recent years and now appears to have assumed a central position in the debate surrounding the purpose and function of higher education. Skill is a construct which is now required to function as a unifying principle and conflates into one notion, previously separate understandings of national economic competitiveness, skilled performance and higher education. It is a construct which is over-used and under-theorised and paradoxically (for such a 'unifying' concept) appears to be fractured by fundamental inconsistencies and structural ambiguities. The aim of this study is to reveal the nature of the problem which impacts on higher education and skill, and to place skill in an appropriate context within higher education. This is undertaken by analysing the literatures which hold skill as a central concept; by attempting to construct a logical framework to provide greater clarity and focus in the use of skill within the discourse of education; to establish an appropriate underpinning rationale for delimiting the use of skill in educational discourse; and to seek to influence educational debate on the appropriate and incommensurable uses of skill within the discourse of education. The research deploys discourse analysis - notably the social constructionist theories of Ernesto Laclau and Chantale Mouffe (1985) - and argues that skill has become a nodal point both within the discourse of education and a floating Signifier between the several discourses which hold skill as a central concept. The study argues that the current conception of skill is both antithetical to skill production within higher education and inimical to the purposes and function of higher education. And further, that skill now functions as a social myth, embodying a new ideology which continues to inflict serious bilateral damage on both higher education and skill.

This thesis applied transformational leadership to the context of higher education, with a focus on lecturing behaviours and student outcomes such as psychological need satisfaction, internalisation, effort, engagement, efficacy, satisfaction and performance. Chapter 1 reviewed the literature on transformational leadership and education and centered on the conceptualisation and measurement of transformational leadership, the theoretical approaches to transformational leadership (i.e., global versus differentiated approaches to leadership behaviours), and the contextual nature of leadership, with specific reference to higher education. Taken together, the literature reveals that little is known about what constitutes transformational leadership in higher education lecturing and how to measure transformational leadership in this context. Moreover, it remains unclear whether developing lecturers' transformational leadership can positively impact on lecturing and student outcomes. Chapter 2 detailed a two-phase examination of student and lecturer perceptions of lecturing behaviours in higher education. In Phase 1, a purposive sample of29 students participated in focus groups examining their perceptions of transformational higher education lecturing. In Phase 2, semi-structured interviews were conducted with . 6 lecturers nominated by students in Phase 1 as being 'transformational'. Results indicated that six behaviours from the differentiated model of transformational leadership (Hardy et al., 2010) can be employed to conceptualise lecturing behaviours (i.e., inspirational motivation, individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, high performance expectations, appropriate role modelling, and contingent reward). The behaviour of fostering acceptance of group goals did not emerge as a contextually relevant transformational behaviour. Furthermore, 'humour' and 'self-belief' emerged as contextually relevant behaviours that have not been previously conceptualised as transformational leadership behaviours in the literature. Chapter 3 described three studies detailing the development and validation of a differentiated transformational leadership inventory for higher education (DTLI-E). Developing questionnaire items from the qualitative results in Chapter 2, Study 1 (n=349) used confirmatory factor analysis to assess the structure of the inventory, resulting in a 30-item, eight factor model. In Study 2, with a different sample, (n=241) the factor structure of the inventory was re-confirmed. Finally, Study 3 employed a longitudinal design with the participants from Study 1 and examined the concurrent and predictive validity of the inventory. Results revealed that the eight factors were correlated with established measures of learning climate and transformational teaching. In addition, the leadership behaviours predicted psychological need satisfaction, behavioural regulation, student engagement, leader inspired extra effort, academic efficacy, student satisfaction, and academic performance. In Chapter 4, an experimental design was employed to examine the effectiveness of a transformational leadership intervention. A total of 5 lecturers and 127 students participated in this study. A mixed method approach combining qualitative and quantitative methods was employed to evaluate the intervention. After controlling for baseline variables, students of lecturers in the intervention group rated their lecturers as displaying significantly higher levels of transformational leadership that the control group. In addition, students of lecturers in the intervention group reported significantly greater levels of psychological need satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, academic engagement, academic efficacy and student satisfaction than the control group. Chapter 5 discusses the findings emanating from this thesis, the strengths and limitations of the thesis and provides suggestions for future research.

The main research topic of this study is universities' academic research and knowledge-transfer activities in a catch-up country, particularly the relationship between the two activities, which has been rarely examined in previous research. In order to understand this issue against existing literature, a critical review of previous studies has been attempted, considering the idiosyncratic characteristics of the Korean national innovation system. As a result, at the three analysis levels (i.e. national, organisational and individual levels), we propose three conceptual elements respectively: a tentative historical path of universities in catch-up countries; critical factors influencing knowledge transfer activities of universities in catch-up countries; and academics operating in synergy mode. Thereafter, based on the methodology integrating not only the three analysis levels but also qualitative and quantitative approaches, we analyse the data collected from the interviews with Korean academics, survey responses from Korean academics and government White Papers on the activities of Korean universities. The results show a close and positive relationship between Korean universities' academic research and knowledge-transfer activities across the three levels. Firstly, during the last several decades, the Korean government has strongly encouraged the development of teaching, academic research and knowledge-transfer activities of Korean universities in harmony with the different developmental stages of Korean industry. This has resulted in selective patterns of the universities' three activities (e.g. concentration of scientific activities in certain fields). Secondly, organisational factors such as scientific capacity and industry funding are important for universities' knowledge-transfer activities in a catch-up country, which corroborates the positive relationship between the two activities. Finally, in terms of the factors influencing the synergy mode (i.e. a positive relationship between academic research and knowledge-transfer activities), academics' career stage and disciplines are important. This is related to the rapid expansion of the Korean academic system and the selectivity found in its activities. Based on these findings, it is tempting to conclude that universities in East Asian catch-up countries have developed their own academic system different from those in developed countries, which can be characterised as having strong government control and a high level of interaction with other actors in the national innovation system. Therefore, the application of the controversy over the direct economic contribution of universities in western countries to the context of catch-up countries is quite limited.

In this thesis we propose a feasible bibliometric assessment framework of research output quality derived from the definition of research proposed by Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Based on this basic framework, we show that research output can be assessed from two elements: significance of new insights and effectiveness of sharing based on the new insights. We investigate this issue from two levels: research publication's quality assessment and academic journal's quality assessment. With regard to measurement of research publications, we confirm citation information is accepted as a measure of effectiveness of sharing regardless of various reasons of citation behavior. On the other hand, we observe there are no sufficient studies on bibliometric indices for significance of new insights, based on information other than citations. In this thesis, we theoretically develop some non-citation based bibliometric measurements via utilizing journal characteristics (e.g. journal acceptance rate (JAR) or journal rejection rate (JRR)). Their strength and weakness are shown in our empirical studies. Furthermore, we believe a more complete assessment for research output quality can be achieved by combining information from the two elements. Several combination approaches such as function combination (i.e. production of two indicators) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach are proposed and testified on real data sets like the Association of "- Business School (ABS) journal ranking and Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Secondly, we utilize a part of the HEFCE framework for journal quality assessment from wider perspectives. To this end two ranking approaches are introduced to serve different stakeholders, and Operational Research/Management Science (OR/MS) journals are employed in the empirical studies. Finally, we report a real project of the 3E (i.e. Efficacy, Efficiency, Effectiveness) theory in an international research institute ranking, jointly carried out by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China, and the Centre for Evaluation of Research Performance (CERP), University of Kent, UK.