Managerial capability valuation of the university management

Abstract

Quality assurance of higher education institutions and objective evaluation of their quality are topical issues nowadays. Educational and scientific institutions equally and significantly contribute to the creation of wealth in a country just like any other technologically advanced areas, such as informatics, new materials and alike. The universities and institutions providing education are therefore at the centre of interest of politicians and governments. The impact of both the level of higher education institutions and their influence on the society is indubitable. Regarding the above-mentioned, each new and progressive element and a new procedure positively affecting the quality should be examined, developed and subsequently applied in practice. The first part of this paper contains theoretical background and description of the current state of academic institutions' quality in relation to the quality of the human resources and personalities of their managers in particular and briefly compares the state of the issue in the higher education sphere and entrepreneurial area. Then, the basic issues of the theory of holistic management capability of entities are explained and the need for the valuation of the complex managerial competence in academic institution is justified. The authors emphasise quality of universities and quality of their management, while presenting the opinions of various interested parties regarding individual traits of the university managers' personalities. The questions arose of how managers are needed today and what general competences they have in general and relating to science, and particularly what their personal traits are. Defined is a personality of a manager of higher education institution as well as what is expected and demanded of him in comparison with a manager in the entrepreneurial sphere. Briefly defined are three pillars of holistic managerial competence: general and specific knowledge, practical and application skills and personal qualities. Since the topic of personal qualities of managers is rather a taboo in post-communist countries, our goal was to find the opinions of interested parties of the possibility of introducing changes into the methods and procedures for selection of managerial positions in our relatively conservative academic environment, with the aim to prepare a progressive model of selection procedure. The important part of the article is therefore devoted to the results of the questionnaire survey into the opinions of three groups of respondents: representatives of the academic institutions' management, of enterprises' management, and academics - not involved in the university management. The questions were focused on the application of the method of assessing managerial competences in the selection of the academic and scientific managerial positions in higher education institutions. The results reflect the current views of the respondents regarding the above-mentioned issues. The final section discusses the survey results and draws conclusions regarding the potential applications of the acquired information and knowledge in practice of a higher education institution, or their integration into legislative documents. The research results presented in the current contribution represent a platform for the subsequent articulation and modelling of an acceptable process of selection procedure for managerial positions in academic institutions.