Leadership and organisational dynamics in higher education internationalisation: Perspectives from European and Chinese universities

This dissertation investigates the complex interplay between leadership and organisational dynamics in higher education internationalisation across European and Chinese universities. Drawing on complex adaptive systems theory and integrating five qualitative empirical studies, it examines leadership roles at the micro level, organisational dimensions at the meso level, and the intra- and inter-university environments in which internationalisation is enacted.
The findings show that leadership for internationalisation is a distributed practice involving multiple institutional actors, but its distribution and enactment are deeply conditioned by organisational structure, identity, and centrality. The study further reveals how leadership interacts with digital governance factors in managing virtual internationalisation and with different configurations of institutional logics in sustaining international cooperation.
The dissertation contributes to a more contextualised and process-oriented understanding of leadership for internationalisation. It argues that universities should move beyond uncritical adoption of global internationalisation narratives and develop leadership practices responsive to their organisational realities, institutional positions, and changing external environments.